/ 


" 


A  WORLD  TO  MEND 


OP  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELA 


THE  WORN  DOORSTEP 
FAMILIAR  WAYS 
A  WORLD  TO  MEND 


A  WOKLD  TO  MEND 


THE  JOURNAL  OF  A  WORKING  MAN 


BY 


MARGARET  SHERWOOD 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1920 


Copyright,  1920, 
BY  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 


All  rights  reserved 
Published  September,  1920 


THEPLIMPTONPRF.SS-NOSWOOD-MASS'C-S-A 


A  WORLD  TO  MEND 


2132922 


May  14,  1916. 

I  have  resolved  to  put  down  from  day  to  day,  as 
time  may  permit  and  humor  bid,  not  only  my  im- 
pression of  events  during  the  world  tragedy,  but 
something  also  of  my  concern  for  the  days  to  come, 
for  the  times  grow  great,  and  to  live  alone  with 
one's  silent  thoughts  is  not  well. 

The  idea  of  keeping  a  journal  would,  a  few  years 
or  even  a  few  months  ago,  have  seemed  to  me  the 
extreme  of  folly,  for  I  have  in  the  course  of  my  life 
put  pen  to  paper  as  little  as  possible.  But  common- 
place people,  living  through  a  great  period,  may 
have  much  to  tell;  not  about  themselves,  God  for- 
bid! Yet  we  who  may  not  take  our  places  in  the 
fighting  line,  who  are  mere  spectators,  may  perhaps 
divine  something  of 'the  deeper  drift  of  these  vast 
happenings. 

I  am  a  commonplace  person,  but  it  has  been  given 
to  me  to  see  great  things. 

I  saw  last  week  the  eyes  of  a  volunteer  regiment 
of  Canadian  boys  starting  for  the  front,  perhaps  the 
most  wonderful  thing  on  God's  earth,  —  a  volun- 
teer army  going,  willingly  up  their  Calvary. 


2  A  WORLD  TO  MEND 

I  am  a  commonplace  person,  but  I  have  a  friend, 
devoted  to  his  family,  his  life  having  been  spent  in 
hardest  professional  work  that  they  might  have  the 
best  possible  education,  who  has  seen  his  three  chil- 
dren start  for  the  danger  fields  of  France,  one  in  an 
aviation  corps,  one  in  a  Canadian  company,  his 
daughter  in  a  Red  Cross  Unit.  He  takes  up  his  in- 
struments in  quite  the  old  way;  he  says  he  is  con- 
tent if  his  children  may  but  help  hi  this  hard  hour. 

I  have  seen  the  face  of  an  American  mother  whose 
son  fell  hi  the  second  summer  of  the  war,  fighting 
with  the  Foreign  Legion  in  France.  She  had  no 
word  of  protest,  or  even  of  regret,  to  utter;  she  spoke 
of  Lafayette. 

And  I  am  aware  that  there  is  astir  upon  the  earth 
some  spirit  of  sacrifice,  deeper,  more  all-embracing 
than  ever  before,  going  out  to  meet  the  greatest 
recorded  cruelty  of  all  time. 

Who  shall  read  aright  the  meaning  of  these  days 
which  have  shown  humanity  incomparably  baser 
than  we  had  dreamed,  but  also  incomparably  finer, 
more  disinterested  than  we  could  have  divined? 
What  promise  for  the  future  is  held  in  the  struggle 
of  this  present  hour,  wherein  the  world  that  is  to  be 
is  being  born  in  anguish?  I,  who  in  my  fifty-odd 
years  have  understood  but  little  of  human  nature 
and  the  forces  which  urge  it  on,  am  driven  by  the 
strong  impulsion  which  has  been  upon  the  souls  of 
men  since  August,  1914,  toward  deeper  understand- 
ing of  the  hidden  forces  of  life. 

May  16. 

There  is  a  fine  freshness  in  the  air ;  the  perfume  of 
apple  blossoms  and  of  pear  comes  in  through  my 


A  WORLD  TO  MEND  3 

open  window.  As  I  sit  here  in  the  sunshine,  busy 
with  my  needle,  the  fact  that  I  am  the  cobbler  of 
Mataquoit  comes  to  me  as  a  startling  and  not,  as 
yet,  fully  apprehended  fact ;  yet,  scrutinizing  with  a 
certain  detached  curiosity  the  position  in  which  I 
find  myself,  the  steps  are  clear  enough  that  led  to  it 
from  the  mood  wherein  I  faced  my  share  of  world 
agony  of  earth's  most  tragic  August. 

In  the  strong  upsurging  of  feeling  from  depths 
unsuspected  before  there  has  been  for  me  from  the 
first  a  sense  of  lack,  a  loneliness  that  was  no  longer 
the  result  of  the  slipping  away  of  friends  and  of 
family  incident  to  my  years.  It  was  a  something 
deeper,  a  longing  to  be  one  with  my  kind.  Was  there 
in  this  the  mere  instinct  that  bids  men  take  refuge 
together  in  time  of  crisis?  Certainly  there  was  no 
apprehension  of  physical  danger;  it  was  a  subtler 
feeling,  an  innermost  sense  of  spiritual  danger,  a 
longing  for  mankind  to  draw  together  before  it  is 
too  late,  for  understanding  so  deep  that  wars  will  be- 
come impossible. 

The  great  trouble  that  has  come  upon  the  race, 
so  staggering  in  its  immensity  that  neither  thought 
nor  imagination  can  grasp  it,  has  come  of  imperfect 
understanding,  of  unachieved  sympathy.  As  I 
realized  this,  the  isolation  of  my  life  took  on  a  new 
and  sinister  significance,  for  there  have  been,  and 
are,  impalpable  barriers  between  me  and  most  of 
my  fellow  men. 

With  the  sense  of  not  being  at  one  with  my  kind 
comes  the  sting  of  realization  that  I  have  not  played 
my  part.  The  waiting  months  have  brought  me  an 
immense  desire,  a  challenge.  I,  with  the  many 
years  behind  me,  I  who  have  done  nothing,  must  yet 


4  A  WORLD  TO  MEND 

make  good.  I  must  work,  must  act;  I  must  do  my 
bit,  finding  my  place,  if  not  among  the  fighting 
ranks  of  France,  at  least  among  the  toiling  ranks  of 
humanity. 

It  is  because  of  this  twofold  desire,  to  understand, 
to  share,  that  I  undertake  a  handicraft,  for  no  mere 
looker-on  can  understand.  I  am  tired  of  printed 
words  and  of  mere  speculative  thought  concerning 
life ;  I  long  to  do  something  with  my  fingers.  There 
is  no  way  of  knowing  one's  fellows  comparable  to 
working  among  them.  Certain  also  of  our  own 
poets  have  said  that  we  draw  near  reality  in  drawing 
near  common  things. 

Hence  Mataquoit  and  my  cobbler's  bench.  I 
have  found,  I  think,  the  quiet  spot  for  which  I 
longed,  and  a  handicraft  that  will  leave  me  time  to 
think,  yet  will  bring  me  into  contact  with  my  fel- 
lows. Because  of  my  troublesome  leg  my  work 
had  to  be  something  at  which  I  could  sit.  For  tailor- 
ing I  know  I  could  never  command  the  requisite 
skill  nor  face  the  long  apprenticeship.  Factory 
work  I  considered,  but  this  would  not  bring  me  into 
contact  with  all  and  sundry  of  my  kind.  I  wish  to 
know  not  one  class  alone,  one  set  of  aspirations  or  of 
grievances,  but  every  kind  of  man  who  walks  the 
streets. 

Cobbling  draws  me,  —  the  independence,  the 
chance  to  smoke  in  the  evening,  perhaps,  with  a  cus- 
tomer. And  it  is  symbolically  appropriate:  my 
life,  —  it  is  but  patching  and  cobbling  that  it  is 
good  for  now.  Here  is  my  last  chance  to  do  it  over ; 
something  to  be  saved  yet,  and  put  to  practical  use. 
Shoes  to  patch,  shoes  to  mend,  lives  to  mend ! 


A  WORLD  TO  MEND  5 

May  18. 

It  is  but  ten  days  since  I  came  to  Mataquoit,  and 
already  it  begins  to  seem  like  home,  more  like  home 
than  anything  I  have  known  since  I  was  a  boy.  Why 
I  chose  this  place  rather  than  any  other  for  the  exer- 
cise of  my  craft  would  be  hard  to  say,  but  I  had  to 
stop  somewhere,  and  I  rather  fancy  the  look  of  vil- 
lage streets  ending  in  the  sea.  I  had  been  traveling 
from  town  to  town  and  from  village  to  village,  on 
foot  for  the  most  part,  being  by  nature  something 
of  a  rover,  and  now,  not  without  a  spirit  of  adven- 
ture and  joy  in  the  open  road  in  the  ripple  of  spring, 
hunting  for  a  place  to  settle.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
swallows,  for,  as  I  stopped  to  rest  late  one  afternoon 
outside  the  village,  sitting  on  a  stone  wall  not  far 
from  a  barn,  swallows  flew  swiftly  this  way  and  that 
about  me,  and  something  in  their  circling  motion 
and  the  deep,  gleaming  blue  of  their  backs,  some- 
thing in  their  quick,  soft  notes  as  they  flew  past  me, 
seemed  to  invite  my  boyhood  back.  For  I  had 
played  more  than  one  summer  in  just  such  a  red 
barn  as  this  under  whose  eaves  they  darted  now  and 
then. 

I  walked  on  to  the  village,  past  snug,  small,  story- 
and-a-half  white  houses  which  seem  as  much  a  part 
of  New  England  as  do  its  granite  rocks,  —  compan- 
ionable houses,  with  latticed  porches,  and  blossom- 
ing apple  trees  and  trim  gardens,  ideal  houses  for  a 
democratic  people.  Faces  on  the  street  seemed  al- 
ready familiar,  women's  faces  both  friendly  and  curi- 
ous above  their  calico  gowns;  one  old  man  with  a 
gray  wisp  of  beard  gave  me  a  greeting  as  is  the 
fashion  of  natives  in  country  places  upon  seeing 
strangers.  In  the  street  I  met  a  load  of  hay  —  last 


6  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

year's  to  be  sure  —  upon  a  blue  hayrick,  a  straw- 
hatted  man  in  blue  overalls  and  red  suspenders 
driving  the  team;  and  I  had  a  sudden  feeling  that, 
could  I  but  mount  beside  him,  I  might  be  carried 
back  into  my  childhood's  simple  and  kindly  world 
that  knew  no  war. 

I  got  no  such  invitation,  however,  but  trudged  on 
past  the  post-office  to  the  one  hostelry  of  the  place, 
the  Eagle  Hotel;  to  a  chair  on  the  porch  where  citi- 
zens of  Mataquoit  were  smoking  with  their  hats 
pushed  back  on  their  foreheads  and  their  feet  on  the 
porch  railing.  Lingering  there,  I  suffered,  to  tell  the 
truth,  a  singular  distaste  to  the  idea  of  becoming  in 
any  sense  one  with  them.  How  am  I  to  make  com- 
mon cause  with  these?  This  new  adventure  of  de- 
mocracy, whither  will  it  lead  me? 

It  would  have  been  easier  to  work  with  the 
wounded,  in  France.  Yet  the  physically  unfit  may 
not  start  out  on  that  crusade ;  and  such  am  I.  They 
would  not  take  me,  even  for  hospital  service.  Shall 
I,  who  could  make  common  cause  with  the  humblest 
poilu,  shrink  from  my  fellow  citizen  at  home  because 
at  a  first  glance  he  looks  physically,  mentally,  and 
spiritually  slovenly,  down  at  heel?  .  .  .  Supper  of 
ham  and  eggs  and  corn  muffins;  and  so,  as  wrote  a 
greater  diarist  than  I,  but  in  a  lesser  period,  "and 
so  to  bed." 

May  21. 

My  involuntary  flinching  from  my  fellows  but 
strengthens  my  resolution.  I  who  have  been  an 
American  citizen  all  my  life,  yet  no  true  citizen; 
who  know  little  about  my  country  and  less  about 
the  mass  of  people  who  make  it  up,  I  will  continue 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  7 

this  voyage  of  discovery  to  that  unknown  country, 
a  commonplace  village  in  my  native  land.  I  and 
mine  are  descendants  of  those  who  first  founded  a 
civilization  in  the  wilds  of  New  England,  of  those 
who  fought  in  the  Revolution  for  freedom  for  man- 
kind. Yet  take  it  all  in  all,  my  own  class,  —  alas, 
that  I  should  use  this  word  in  a  democratic  land !  — 
have  not  concerned  themselves  greatly  with  the 
working  of  our  government,  and,  busy  with  intellec- 
tual pursuits  or  with  pleasures,  could  hardly  have 
been  more  false  to  a  great  trust.  Plato's  Republic  is 
more  familiar  to  me  than  our  own.  We  have  slipped 
outside  of  vital,  struggling  America,  standing  apart, 
on  ancestral  privilege.  Here  and  there,  perhaps, 
one  has  done  his  duty,  in  Senate,  House,  or  State 
legislature,  but  as  regards  civic  responsibility,  the 
majority  of  us  have  been  shirkers. 

Yet  I  mean  to  set  down  here  not  my  past  history, 
but  my  present  intent.  I  must  set  it  down  clearly, 
"lest  I  forget",  and  look  back  from  time  to  time  to 
see  if  I  have  kept  my  purpose  clear. 

I  intend  to  observe  closely  the  inner  operation  of 
democracy  in  its  old  stronghold  and  initial  home  in 
our  country,  the  New  England  shore.  There  are 
many  who  study  the  foreign  elements,  investigate 
immigrants,  interview  and  tabulate  the  slums.  Yet 
who  studies  the  old  stock  to  see  what  the  descend- 
ants of  our  pioneer  forefathers  have  done  with  their 
great  chance  in  life?  What  have  one  hundred  and 
forty  years  of  liberty,  equality,  fraternity  wrought 
here?  What  finer,  freer  types  of  men  have  been 
produced?  What  sense  of  human  brotherhood? 

Regarding  the  theoretical  aspects  of  our  govern- 
ment as  manifest  in  our  political  institutions,  I  am 


8  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

well  enough  informed,  but  of  the  human  reaction  to 
these  institutions,  the  individual  sense  of  responsi- 
bility shown  by  the  mass  of  people  who  make  up  the 
country,  I  know  nothing  at  all.  Often,  I  am  told, 
in  business  enterprises,  the  proprietor's  son  begins 
at  the  bottom  and  moves  on  up  through  the  "works," 
learning  to  understand.  Even  so  am  I  resolved  to 
begin  far  down,  and  to  learn  something  of  the 
"works"  of  this,  my  America.  Hence  I  desire  to 
draw  near,  in  some  inconspicuous  place,  to  people 
in  no  way  distinguished  from  the  rest,  to  observe  in 
what  ways  they  fulfil  the  constant  task  of  always 
making  themselves  a  free  people.  In  studying 
others  I  shall  perhaps  learn  better  how  to  play  my 
own  part. 

Surely  here  in  this  sacred  stronghold  of  liberty 
some  spark  of  the  ancestral  divine  fire  lingers;  at 
this  great  moment,  the  winds  that  sweep  the  whole 
world  must  blow  it  into  flame.  So  will  become  ap- 
parent the  forces  on  which  we  can  count  for  the 
rekindling  of  life,  the  earth  over,  when  this  awful 
struggle  is  ended,  in  a  world  where  there  shall  be  no 
more  wars  nor  rumors  of  wars. 


II 


May  25. 

There  is  little  that  is  distinctive  about  this  shore 
town ;  it  is  partly  because  of  this  that  I  am  resolved 
to  stay.  The  place  has  something  of  a  past,  sug- 
gested by  rotting  wharves  and  great  colonial  houses, 
some  of  them  falling  apart,  as  have  many  of  these 
coastwise  places,  enriched  by  fisheries  in  past  days; 
it  has  perhaps  a  future  suggested  by  a  renewal  of 
shipbuilding  and  by  a  bustle  of  life  on  a  main  street 
with  thriving  shops.  One  old-fashioned  white  church 
with  a  white  spire,  in  a  sunny  green  square;  a 
modern-looking  brick  school  building  hardly  in  keep- 
ing with  the  rest  of  the  place;  a  Carnegie  library; 
well-kept  houses,  both  fairly  large  and  small,  with 
rose  vines  and  honeysuckle  and  not  wholly  neglected 
lawns;  a  drug  store;  two  groceries;  a  department 
store,  recently  started,  called  "Sands'  Emporium"; 
and  always  the  breath  of  the  sea. 

It  is  not  a  summer  resort;  had  it  been,  I  should 
have  searched  farther.  A  normal  kind  of  life,  so 
far  as  I  can  judge,  goes  on  here,  with  fishing  enough 
for  a  part  of  the  population,  the  small,  shallow 
harbor  being  admirably  suited  to  this;  shop  windows 
testify  to  a  variety  of  business  enterprises;  many 
citizens  of  Mataquoit  live  on  inherited  incomes,  in 
ancestral  houses  shaded  by  huge  elms  or  maples. 
There  is  farming  enough  for  a  large  number,  the  sur- 


10  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

rounding  meadow  lands  and  rolling  hills  being,  I 
am  told,  very  fertile.  They  are  also  beautiful,  as 
are  the  sea  meadows  north  of  the  village,  through 
which  a  tidal  river  runs. 

I  had  already  decided  to  stay,  when  I  made  the 
fortunate  discovery  that  the  place  has  no  cobbler. 
The  one  citizen  of  this  profession  died  six  months 
ago;  since  then,  though  Mataquoit  does  not  go 
shoeless,  as  these  articles,  of  a  rather  thin  and  un- 
substantial kind,  may  be  bought  at  the  department 
store,  there  is  no  one  nearer  than  ten  miles  away  to 
cobble  them. 

To  think  of  finding  thus,  at  my  age,  "the  need  of 
a  world  of  men  for  me!" 

I  have  found  more  than  that;  I  have  found  the 
cobbler's  shop,  not  yet  dismantled,  with  a  sign  To 
Rent  on  its  door.  It  stands  in  an  open  space  under 
a  pine  tree,  a  bit  back  from  the  main  street,  where, 
if  I  have  time  to  look  up  from  my  bench,  I  can  see 
the  happenings  in  this  small  thoroughfare  of  democ- 
racy, and  learn  something  of  my  new  art  of  living 
with  my  fellows  as  I  carry  on  my  chosen  profession. 
My  poetic  belief  in  humanity,  —  is  it  a  practical 
one?  Will  it  stand  the  test  of  daily  contact  with 
humble  folk?  It  must,  and  shall. 

I  have  interviewed  the  cobbler's  widow  and  have 
paid  a  month's  rent  in  advance.  The  shop  is  mine, 
with  its  two  windows;  its  bench;  its  lasts;  its  many 
awls  and  needles;  its  shoemaker's  wax;  its  linen 
thread;  its  pieces  of  rough  leather  hanging  on  the 
walls;  its  pungent,  oily,  leathery,  waxy  smell.  A 
very  useful  smell. 

I  have  taken  it  all  over,  including  material  much 
of  which,  of  course,  must  be  too  old  for  service,  and 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  11 

instruments  whose  use  I  do  not  yet  know.  There 
will  be  time  enough  to  find  out.  The  business  trans- 
action I  got  over  as  soon  as  possible,  for  I  do  not 
like  bargaining.  The  cobbler's  widow  was,  I  think, 
disappointed  that  I  did  not  dispute  the  terms.  She 
mourns  her  husband  in  an  untidy  pink  gingham ;  her 
shoes  are  ripped. 

Even  the  cobbler's  sign  is  ready  for  me,  as  it  bears 
no  name. 

BOOTS  AND  SHOES  REPAIRED 

I  found  it  on  the  floor  and  nailed  it  to  the  side  of 
the  window  facing  the  street. 

So,  at  fifty  and  more  years,  I  begin  my  life  work. 

Thus  I  become  a  citizen  of  Mataquoit,  —  lonely, 
without  introductions,  cut  off  absolutely  from  my 
previous  life;  without  anything  that  would  preju- 
dice, anything  that  would  gain  favor.  Here  is  my 
adventure  into  the  unknown,  —  the  unknown  of  a 
plain  New  England  town. 

Robinson  Crusoe  on  his  island  was  not  more  alone. 
After  all,  this  New  England  town  with  its  homely 
happenings,  the  goings  on  in  its  little  shops  and 
about  its  doorways,  is  as  much  a  new  world  to  me 
as  was  Crusoe's  island  to  Robinson  Crusoe. 

I  shall  set  to  work  in  a  different  way  from  his. 
There  shall  be  no  stockade  to  separate  me  from  my 
kind!  Not  if  I  can  keep  pulling  it  down. 

There  is  a  wary  friendliness  in  the  attitude  of 
people  toward  me.  They  give  me  kind  greeting,  but 
they  watch  me;  they  look  upon  me,  I  think,  as  a 
ne'er-do-well,  —  not  without  reason,  not  without 
reason. 


12  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

May  31. 

I  should  not  like  to  have  my  neighbors  know  that 
I  am  keeping  a  journal;  hence  the  day  when  I  went 
to  purchase  a  blank  book  for  the  purpose  I  chose  at 
Collins'  stationery  and  small  ware  store  a  ledger 
with  brown  mottled  binding  and  a  long  page.  The 
page  is  rather  narrow,  and  the  ruled  marginal  red 
lines  will  be  somewhat  in  the  way,  but  at  least  old 
Abel  Marks  the  postman,  and  Phil  Landers  the 
expressman,  and  the  other  onlookers  standing  about 
in  the  shop  will  think  that  I  got  it  for  my  accounts 
in  cobbling.  It  is  better  in  Mataquoit  not  to  be 
seen  writing  in  anything  in  which  your  neighbors  do 
not  write. 

"That's  considerable  of  a  book,"  said  Abel  Marks. 
"You  must  have  big  accounts." 

And  in  truth  it  is  a  long  account  that  I  mean  to 
keep. 

I  have  an  idea  that  such  entries  as  I  shall  make 
may  not  be  inappropriately  entered  in  a  ledger,  for 
I  am  resolved  to  make  an  effort,  not  only  to  balance 
my  own  account,  but  to  do  a  bit  in  the  way  of  bal- 
ancing accounts  in  the  universe,  so  far  as  an  indi- 
vidual may. 

As  I  write  by  the  light  of  my  kerosene  lamp,  which 
flickers  in  the  fresh  breeze  from  the  sea,  I  think  over 
the  past  months  of  world  agony,  of  continued  defeat 
on  every  front  for  the  Allied  armies,  and  ask  what 
I  may  put  down  on  the  asset  side,  where  all  seems 
loss.  Is  it  all  loss  for  us,  or  is  our  whole  great  nation, 
with  all  its  wavering,  wakening  to  a  profounder 
sympathy  and  a  finer  purpose  than  were  ever  ours 
before? 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  13 

June  2. 

My  first  day  in  the  shop ;  no  customers,  but  many 
passing  feet.  I  can  hear  the  sea  distinctly  from  my 
bench  when  the  village  street  is  quiet.  Employed 
my  time  looking  over  my  stock,  sorting  tools,  nails, 
pegs,  of  which  I  found  a  good  supply;  going  over 
the  leather  left  in  the  shop  and  throwing  out  the 
useless  bits.  The  needles  are  old  and  broken,  but  I 
brought  with  me  what  I  thought  I  should  need  in 
this  way,  also  thread.  Of  Angus  McDonell,  the 
Scotchman  who  taught  me  my  trade  in  Ontario,  I 
learned  that,  in  the  way  of  thread  for  the  cobbler, 
nothing  less  good  than  the  best  will  suffice.  Of 
lasts  I  find  enough  for  two  cobblers;  these  I  have 
arranged  neatly  in  a  row  on  the  floor.  For  the  first 
time  in  my  life  I  swept  a  room ;  the  results  I  burned 
in  a  cast-iron  stove  in  the  corner.  Never  before 
have  I  made  a  fire  in  a  stove. 

With  the  owner's  permission,  I  shall  have  a  chim- 
ney run  up  at  the  side  of  the  shop,  and  a  brick  fire- 
place put  in.  Also,  I  plan  to  have  the  town  water 
conducted  to  the  shed  in  the  rear. 

The  problem  of  my  lodging  proved  simpler  than  I 
had  dared  hope.  I  live  in  a  story-and-a-half  white 
house  about  an  eighth  of  a  mile  from  my  place  of 
business.  I  am  to  pay  five  dollars  a  week  for  board 
and  lodging;  can  I  earn  it?  A  gray  widow  in  a  blue 
print  gown  is  my  hostess;  a  huge  gray  tabby  cat 
is  my  host. 

Bacon  and  baked  potatoes ;  ham  and  eggs ;  baking- 
powder  biscuit;  rye  muffins;  an  endless  drip  of  tea. 
It  is  new  diet  for  me,  but  prisoners  have  fared  worse. 

Farmers'  wagons  creak  down  the  streets;  the  old 
hitching  posts  are  not  yet  all  gone.  The  old  horses 


14  A   WORLD    TO    MEND 

shy  at  the  motors,  and  sometimes  a  thin-faced 
woman  screams  when  Dobbin's  antics  become  alarm- 
ing. Boys  and  girls,  awed  by  even  this  small  town, 
come  in  from  remote  hamlets.  The  faces  of  grown 
folk  and  of  children  are  different  from  the  faces 
that  I  have  hitherto  known. 

I  have  indeed  secured  a  new  outlook  on  life. 

June  4. 

I  have  scored  two  human  beings  in  my  dragnet 
to-day.  A  boy  came,  with  tennis  shoes  needing  a  few 
stitches.  I  could  take  them.  But  a  farmer  came 
with  what  had  once  been  a  boot,  and  I  had  no  skill 
for  its  re-creating.  Alack  for  the  ruin  that  nothing 
can  make  good !  I  shall  have  to  study  the  problem 
of  where  all  hope  of  reconstruction  ends,  in  boots 
and  shoes  and  elsewhere. 

In  the  absence  of  human  companionship,  I  fall 
back  upon  books  and  magazines  which  I  brought 
with  me.  War,  and  the  tragedy  of  war  encompassing 
all  our  life!  Yet,  through  all  the  stages  of  the 
struggle,  in  which  humanity  is  crucified,  unbearably 
vivid  as  they  are,  I  hear,  far  off  and  dim,  the  echoes 
of  the  greater  struggle  that  will  come  when  the  ac- 
tual fighting  ceases.  For  it  is  a  war  between  two 
principles,  and,  even  when  autocracy  is  crushed,  the 
battle  will  be  but  begun  over  the  earth  to  establish 
the  free  rule  of  free  men,  in  their  several  distinctions 
and  individualities. 

They  who  are  in  Flanders  field  and  in  the  fields 
of  France  hear  the  noise  of  guns,  of  great  explosions, 
of  artillery;  I,  who  have  about  me  quiet,  who  have 
time  to  think,  hear  the  sounds  of  coming  conflict,  a 
greater  and  more  menacing  roar  than  that  of  war 
time. 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  15 

We  shall  face  a  world  with  its  old  foundations 
gone,  a  world  with  foundations  to  build  from  the 
very  bottom,  of  understanding  and  sympathy  and 
trust  between  man  and  man,  such  as  have  never 
existed  before. 

To  achieve  this  we  must  find  a  way  to  make  the 
progress  of  men's  souls  equal,  outstrip  their  ma- 
terial and  mechanical  progress.  It  will  be  such  a 
race  as  humanity  never  entered  upon  since  time  be- 
gan. How  can  we  draw  the  creative  genius,  which 
has  gone  in  years  past  into  the  making  of  agents  of 
destruction  or  devices  for  physical  comfort,  into  the 
construction  of  conditions  under  which  man  can 
live  with  man  in  harmony?  It  is  not  cogwheels  and 
levers  that  should  command  the  service  of  our  finest 
intellect,  but  human  souls. 


Ill 


June  6. 

I  confess  that,  these  first  days  in  my  shop,  I  am 
lonelier  than  ever,  with  a  feeling  that  I  have  cut  my- 
self off  from  old  associations  and  have  not  yet  es- 
tablished new.  I  walk  the  village  street,  realizing 
that  I  am  a  stranger  in  my  own  country;  I  might 
as  well  have  been  born  in  ancient  Rome.  This  may 
be  a  democratic  country,  but  I  and  mine  have  never 
lived  in  a  democratic  world;  from  boyhood  I  have 
been  kept  from  knowledge  of  men,  save  a  chosen 
few.  All  my  years  of  training,  all  my  personal  en- 
deavor, have  meant  a  refining,  a  selection,  an  at- 
tempt to  reach  more  and  more  fastidious  standards, 
with  no  corresponding  sense  of  responsibility  toward 
those  as  yet  unaware  of  them.  Now,  retribution  has 
come,  for  thin  veils  of  thought,  of  feeling,  distinc- 
tions that  I  used  to  think  most  important,  drop  be- 
tween me  and  my  fellow  men.  They  are  aware  of  it, 
as  am  I. 

At  my  bench,  by  the  window  with  a  newspaper, 
I  listened  the  greater  part  of  the  day  to  the  footsteps 
of  passing  people  and  caught  bits  of  their  conversa- 
tion. There  were  comments  on  the  high  price  of 
eggs  and  a  report  of  a  good  catch  of  fish ;  and  there 
were  remarks  about  my  open  doorway  and  the  sign 
on  my  shop. 

"Where  does  he  come  from?"  asked  one  gruff 
voice. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  17 

"Dunno,"  was  the  sufficient  answer. 

"Anybody  know  his  folks?" 

I  could  not  hear  the  reply  to  this,  but  I  did  not 
need  to.  The  same  old  question  that  I  have  heard 
so  often,  though  hi  different  circles  and  in  different 
English!  It  is  indeed  a  lonely  venture,  voyaging 
where  nobody  knows  your  "folks" !  and  the  hollowed 
board  steps  of  my  shop  are  to  me,  even  as  to  him, 
the  prow  of  Ulysses'  wandering  ship,  headed  for 
uncharted  seas. 

The  morning  passed  and  nobody  called.  In  the 
afternoon  one  visitor  arrived,  growling.  I  looked 
up  from  the  page  on  which  I  am  writing  to  see  a 
pair  of  brown,  questioning  eyes  fixed  on  me ;  a  ques- 
tioning nose  sniffing  threshold  and  doorway;  a 
shaggy  tail  began  to  wave  slightly  as  I  spoke. 

Wagging  and  growling  went  on  together  as  my 
unexpected  guest  responded  to  my  invitation  to 
enter;  he  smelled  of  many  things  in  the  shop,  then 
drew  cautiously  near,  searching  my  very  soul  with 
his  eyes.  Lonely;  I  know  the  look;  the  best  thing 
in  life  was  lacking,  companionship. 

I  half  guessed,  what  afterward  proved  to  be  the 
case,  that  he  was  my  predecessor's  dog;  and  I  briefly 
explained  to  him  in  words  that  I  had  not  made  way 
with  his  master;  that  I  had  come  honestly  by  the 
shop;  that  I  meant  to  work  there;  that  I  would  be 
glad  of  his  friendship,  if  he  would  accept  mine. 

The  growling  ceased,  the  wagging  grew  more 
cordial  as  I  spoke ;  I  caressed  his  shaggy  ears ;  before 
I  knew  it  his  head  was  on  my  knee;  with  a  deep 
sigh,  as  of  homecoming,  he  dropped  down  upon  the 
floor  and  slept,  with  one  eye  open.  So  I  acquired 
an  assistant  and  ally. 


18  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

He  is  large,  brown,  long-haired,  with  a  suggestion 
of  setter,  a  hint  of  collie.  Doubtless  he  has  several 
strains;  so  much  the  better!  I  shall  make  no  in- 
quiries about  his  "folks";  we  must  work  out  our 
great  task  of  democracy. 

Do  not  the  finest  peoples  admittedly  come  of  the 
much  mixed  races?  Witness  the  English,  in  their 
remote  beginnings;  witness  the  ancient  Greeks,  in 
their  remote  beginnings.  What  promise,  then,  for 
America,  with  its  present  clash  of  innumerable  na- 
tionalities! One  would  like  to  live  a  few  hundred 
years,  or  thousands,  to  see  the  resulting  race. 

Temperament,  passion,  from  the  Italians  and 
Greeks;  we  sadly  need  that,  with  our  thinner  blood. 
Mysticism,  the  tendency  toward  faith,  from  the 
Slavs;  we  sadly  need  that,  with  our  preoccupation 
with  the  merely  practical,  our  profound  concern  with 
the  world  of  mere  happenings.  From  the  Scandi- 
navians? I  do  not  know  so  well,  —  but  from  all  the 
many  nationalities,  what  resources  we  may  gather; 
what  poetry;  what  depth  of  feeling,  sensitiveness  to 
aspects  of  human  life  and  experience  of  which  we 
have  in  the  past  been  unaware  in  our  pell-mell  en- 
deavors to  make  good,  to  achieve  in  practical  ways! 

June  9. 

Two  dollars  and  forty-seven  cents  is  the  result  of 
my  first  week's  work.  The  size  of  the  sum  does 
not  account  for  my  great  pride  in  it ;  it  is  the  first 
money  that  I  have  ever  earned.  This  does  not 
amount  to  a  living  wage,  and  yet  I  shall  not  strike. 
To  my  shame  as  a  wage-earner  be  it  said  that  I 
have,  aside  from  my  earnings,  enough  for  bread 
and  cheese. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  19 

The  curiosity  that  my  coming  has  aroused  will,  I 
hope,  soon  die  down.  To  the  inquiries  of  my  hostess, 
the  Widow  Frayne,  regarding  my  past  life,  I  have 
replied  with  a  certain  reserve,  question  for  question. 

I  also  was  born  in  New  England. 

June  10. 

To-day  came  in  as  fine  a  lad  as  I  ever  set  eyes  on, 
a  tall,  upstanding,  stalwart  young  fellow,  with  a 
red-brown  glow  in  his  cheeks,  and  a  yellow-brown 
gleam  in  his  hair. 

Tim,  I  observed,  did  not  know  him,  but  would  be 
glad  to  make  his  acquaintance,  if  the  swift  touch  of 
a  red  tongue  on  the  friendly  outstretched  hand  told 
truth. 

This  was  a  college  boy,  I  saw.  My  heart  would 
have  warmed  to  him,  even  without  that  large  letter 
on  his  sweater.  Having  seen  that,  I  felt  hesitation 
about  charging  him  for  his  shoe. 

He  had  come  to  have  a  rip  in  his  tennis  shoe  sewed 
up,  a  good-sized  shoe,  I  thought  to  myself,  right  well 
in  keeping  with  his  six-foot  height  and  his  broad 
shoulders.  He  would  wait  while  it  was  being  done, 
he  said,  and  he  seated  himself  with  an  air  of  quiet 
possession  in  an  arm-chair,  with  his  stockinged  foot 
resting  on  a  box  filled  with  scraps  of  leather. 

As  I  stitched  I  saw  that  he  had  opened  a  book;  it 
may  be  that  my  job  went  a  bit  the  worse  for  my 
looking  up  now  and  then  to  see  him  at  his  study. 
I  watched  to  see  if  the  trouble  of  the  world  was  re- 
flected in  his  face,  but  there  was  no  shadow  of  it; 
rather,  a  look  as  if  it  hurt  a  bit  to  stop  smiling  for 
a  few  minutes.  He  was  working  at  Latin  and  was 
evidently  deeply  puzzled,  for  he  talked  aloud,  saying 


20  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

over  certain  words  and  giving  their  individual  mean- 
ing. Evidently  their  collective  sense  escaped  him. 
Before  I  knew  it,  I  had  construed  it  for  him. 

"Great  Caesar!"  he  said,  with  his  eyes  still  on  the 
page.  "That's  right!  Stupid  not  to  see  it" 

He  thrust  the  book  into  his  pocket,  then  turned 
and  looked  at  me. 

"Who  are  you,  anyway,"  he  asked,  "cobbling  and 
quoting  Latin?" 

I  laughed,  but  realized  that  I  had  blundered. 

"And  you,"  I  said,  "who  are  studious  enough  to 
work  on  Latin  in  vacation  time?" 

"Studious ! "  he  scoffed ;  and  then,  as  if  it  were  the 
only  explanation  that  condoned  his  conduct : 

"Condition;  left  over  from  Sophomore  year." 

I  said  nothing,  but  went  on  with  my  stitching. 

"You  seem  to  be  something  of  a  mystery,"  he 
ventured. 

"So  are  all  men,"  I  answered. 

His  eyes  twinkled  back  at  mine  in  understanding 
fashion.  He  asked  no  more  questions,  but  put  on  his 
shoe,  patted  Tim,  and  went  away. 

I  could  not  help  thinking,  as  I  watched  him  swing- 
ing down  the  street,  that  I  should  like  to  see  him 
again. 

June  11. 

One  strange  thing  about  'this  epoch,  strange  cer- 
tainly in  the  experience  of  a  person  of  my  years,  is 
the  feeling  that  it  brings  of  the  utter  inadequacy  of 
one's  whole  personality,  of  one's  previous  interests, 
the  realization  of  one's  achievements  as  pitiful,  as 
less  than  nothing.  It  is  as  if  the  past  hardly  existed, 
or  belonged  to  a  state  of  unachieved  being.  The 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  21 

events  of  the  last  two  years  have  stirred  me,  lifted 
me  out  of  myself,  recreated  me.  A  new  and  suffering 
youth  is  born  in  me,  a  feeling  that  I  am  at  the 
beginning  of  my  experience. 

Do  all  great  periods  of  change  and  transition 
make  themselves  so  distinctly  felt  in  passionate  de- 
sire to  begin  over,  in  a  feeling  that  earth  is  being 
born  again  in  anguish,  and  in  longing  to  be  born 
with  it?  Nothing  in  all  my  previous  experience  is 
comparable  with  this;  even  I,  in  my  sixth  decade, 
am  sharing  something  unfathomably  great  that  is 
coming  into  the  world,  through  the  grandeur  of 
human  courage  in  this  hour  of  unexampled  trial. 

One  needs  to  be  greater,  different;  there  are  as 
yet  unimagined  things  to  be  done  and  dared,  and 
the  stakes  are  higher,  the  risks  greater  than  ever 
before ;  one  needs  young  valor,  and  impetuous  faith 
such  as  hardly  goes  with  middle  age.  It  is  hard  to 
grasp  all  aspects  of  this  great  awakening  when  we 
who  had  grown  weary  are  asking  for  more  years  of 
life  that  we  may  understand  more  deeply  the  chal- 
lenge of  circumstance  to  the  human  soul,  and  may 
yet  make  good.  With  all  the  long  years  back  of 
me,  it  is  strange  to  feel  so  new,  so  ready  to  be  tried. 

If  I  had  but  the  years  of  the  young  man  who  was 
here  yesterday! 


IV 


June  13 

My  room  commands  a  bit  of  the  sea,  but  more  of 
the  street.  There  are  lilac  bushes  below  my  window, 
now  in  fresh  bloom.  Sometimes  I  see  a  white  sail 
between  the  overarching  elms';  sometimes  a  blue 
farm  wagon  or  a  load  of  hay  goes  jogging  down  the 
street. 

A  worsted  motto:  Seek  And  Ye  Shall  Find;  a 
patchwork  quilt;  a  grayish-blue  painted  floor  of 
wide  boards  that  look  hand-hewn,  —  there  is  much 
of  novelty  in  my  surroundings  and  something  too  of 
home.  I  have  always  been,  in  theory,  a  lover  of 
simplicity,  paying  homage  to  plain  living  and  high 
thinking.  Simplicity  is  the  secret  of  all  great  art, 
why  not  of  all  great  life?  Seeking,  shall  I  indeed 
find  it? 

A  wrought-iron  latch  is  on  my  door.  No  lock :  no 
bar.  There  is  writing  on  my  whitewashed  wall  at 
night  by  the  shadow  of  leaf  and  branch  and  twig  in 
the  light  of  the  street  lamp,  but  the  writing  is  hard 
to  read. 

June  15. 

Twice  to-day  I  saw  passing  my  shop  the  college 
youth  who  came  in  a  few  days  ago.  I  wonder  who 
he  is?  I  find  myself  thinking  of  him  with  a  certain 
sense  of  curiosity. 

Tried  to  read,  but  tossed  away  a  long  treatise  on 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  23 

labor  problems.  My  old  study  of  economics  helps 
me  but  little  now,  in  any  of  its  aspects.  I  do  not 
want  to  understand  Humanity  in  the  abstract;  it 
is  not  to  be  done;  I  want  to  know  human  beings. 

I  am  tired  of  professional  analyses,  of  ratios  and 
percentages  and  statistics.  None  of  these  generaliza- 
tions ever  brought  me  any  whit  nearer  that  under- 
standing of  individual  men  on  which  an  enduring 
social  order  must  be  based. 

Of  Man  I  have  heard  and  talked  much ;  how  shall 
I  become  acquainted  with  men?  Of  this  I  am  cer- 
tain, —  mere  information,  mere  intellectual  acumen 
will  never  achieve  that  finer  understanding  whose 
real  name  is  sympathetic  insight. 

June  16. 

A  fine  test  of  my  theoretical  sympathy  came  to- 
day with  a  half-drunken  brakeman  blaming  me  for 
the  hole  in  his  boot.  ...  I  sit  crushed  among 
the  wreckage  of  my  aspiration  and  of  my  finer  mood. 
How  I  love  you,  my  brother,  when  you  stand  at  a 
distance,  —  with  a  strong  wind  blowing  between  us! 

Yet  I  have  asked  for  this  contact  with  individual 
men.  Humanity  in  figures  is  easier  to  cope  with. 
A  table  of  statistics,  a  column  of  figures  is  at  least 
non-odorous  and  does  not  chew  tobacco. 

I  am  the  greatest  failure  on  God's  earth. 

June  19. 

As  I  sit  at  my  bench  in  my  hut  under  the  pine 
tree,  tapping  —  for  I  have  two  pairs  of  boots  to 
mend  —  always  with  the  thought  of  the  great  ac- 
count I  am  to  keep  in  my  ledger,  the  days  of  the 
beginning  of  the  war  come  back  to  my  mind:  that 


24  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

rocky  spot  where  I  was  staying  on  the  Maine  coast, 
Anaquid,  with  the  days  and  nights  of  fog ;  the  papers 
coming  with  their  unbelievable  headlines  about 
mobilizing  and  about  threatened  war;  the  incredu- 
lous faces  of  the  readers  on  the  hotel  piazzas;  the 
unbelieving  eyes  of  those  who  read  the  German 
ultimatums.  Then,  with  the  swift  and  terrible  news 
of  the  invasion  of  Belgium  —  still,  alas !  unprotested 
by  our  government  —  came  creeping  mist  and  fog 
that  blotted  out  all  outlines  of  a  world  known  and 
loved;  and  the  tolling  of  the  lighthouse  bell,  day 
and  night,  night  and  day,  as  if  telling  of  the  passing 
of  souls.  The  fog  opened  only  to  shut  down  again 
more  heavily,  in  hushed  suspense  that  seemed  to 
prelude  the  ending  of  a  world. 

We  know  now  that  it  was  not  the  ending  of  a  world 
but  the  ending  of  a  period;  that  we  have  grown 
somewhat  in  these  two  years  many  things  declare. 
There  is  something  to  put  on  the  asset  side  of  my 
ledger!  The  shock  of  those  days  meant  to  many 
people  their  first  realization  that  humanity  is  one, 
so  hardly  are  some  great  lessons  learned !  It  is  long 
since  I  have  heard  any  one  say,  as  people  said  in  the 
autumn  of  1914:  "Well,  if  those  people  want  to 
fight  and  kill  each  other,  it  is  no  affair  of  mine.  No, 
I  won't  send  my  money  to  the  wounded ;  I  will  give 
it  to  the  suffering  here.  They  should  not  go  back  to 
barbarism  unless  they  want  to  suffer."  Such  things 
were  said  in  various  ways  by  various  people  then; 
they  reflected  perfectly  the  attitude  of  a  young  and 
complacent  democracy  that  had  long  outgrown  war 
and  all  longing  for  anything  that  could  be  gained  by 
war,  but  that  had  not  lost  a  sense  of  itself  as  a 
thing  apart,  nor  gained  the  pitying  insight  into 


A   WORLD    TO   MEND  25 

human  nature  on  which  a  lasting  democracy  must 
rest.  Are  we  gaming  it  now? 

Even  then  there  were  signs  that  heralded  a  better 
and  more  human  attitude  which  has  become  more 
apparent  since.  A  physician  told  me  that  illness  had 
increased  among  his  patients,  —  the  old,  the  deli- 
cate succumbing,  under  their  hurt  sympathy,  to  the 
shock.  One  was  almost  glad  to  hear  it ;  it  showed  a 
deeper  sense  of  life  being  linked  with  life  than  was 
shown  by  many  of  the  robust.  And  again  it  made 
me  wonder,  as  I  have  innumerable  times  wondered 
and  most  times  believed,  whether  the  medieval  idea 
of  the  suffering  body  as  aiding  the  struggling  soul 
were  not,  on  the  whole,  better  than  the  impassioned 
conviction  of  this  age  through  which  I  have  lived 
that  the  strong  body  is  all.  Suffering  and  weakness 
may  be  the  source  of  many  an  insight.  We,  stand- 
ing on  the  edge  of  this  vast  sea  of  sorrow  and  of 
suffering,  shall  we  know,  when  we  have  plunged  into 
it,  perhaps  through  it,  as  we  have  not  known  in  the 
past? 

After  the  incredulity,  the  failure  to  believe  that 
the  evil  thing  had  come  to  pass,  there  was  for  many 
a  sense  of  great  and  impersonal  sorrow,  of  sympa- 
thetic fear  for  France,  for  England,  fear  —  a  deeper, 
subtler  fear  —  for  civilization  itself.  The  very  foun- 
dations on  which  life  rests  were  crumbling  under  us. 
There  was,  born  of  pity  for  the  appalling  suffering, 
wrath  and  distrust  of  this  alleged  civilization,  a 
deepening  sense  of  the  futility  of  its  outward  prog- 
ress, a  deepening  sense  of  values  of  much  old  thought 
and  faith  that  had  slipped  away.  There  was  desire 
to  retreat  and  find  where  it  was  that  the  modern 
world  took  the  wrong  step. 


26  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

Under  all  question  or  approval  of  this  or  that  act 
of  this  or  that  nation  lay  a  deeper  and  crueler  won- 
der: Had  we  been  living  all  these  years  in  a  world 
that  did  not  exist?  We  had  been  taught  that  the 
universe  was  a  moral  universe;  was  this  faith  base- 
less? Hurt  speculative  thought  perhaps  hardly  ever 
arrives,  but  rather  goes  round  and  round,  squirrel- 
wise,  in  its  cage.  It  went  faster  then,  and  the  world 
seemed  going  with  it,  spinning  way  off  its  course, 
through  endless  space. 

It  was  not  only  the  incredible  fact  of  the  war,  in 
a  world  which  had  gone  so  far  beyond  in  high  aim ; 
stories  of  German  atrocities  began  to  come,  the  rape 
of  women,  old  and  young,  the  constant  shooting  of 
civilians  in  cowardly  murder,  the  utter  destruction  of 
farms  and  of  villages,  the  setting  fire  to  buildings  in 
which  human  beings  had  been  locked.  Sickening 
belief,  only  tentative  before,  followed  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Bryce  report,  and  we  felt  ourselves  on 
the  edge  of  a  vast  abyss  that  had  opened  at  our 
feet,  yawning,  a  thing  of  undreamed  horror,  into 
whose  black  deeps  we  dared  not  look;  it  seemed 
about  to  swallow  us  up,  with  all  that  men  had  here- 
tofore achieved  of  kindness,  of  pity,  of  bare  justice. 

And  this  horror  has  gone  on,  increasing  through 
torture,  lust,  treachery  and  broken  faith  for  two  long 
years.  Here  we  go  as  usual  about  our  quiet  ways  of 
life,  with  the  possibility  staring  us  in  the  face  of  a 
civilization  lost,  a  world  lost. 

It  shall  not  be  lost ;  we  have  too  much  wherewith 
to  build  a  new  and  better  world!  If  the  horror  has 
gone  on  increasing,  as  it  has,  what  shall  we  say  of 
the  swift-coming  glory  of  human  courage,  human 
devotion,  that  meets  it  at  every  turn,  faces  it,  tran- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  27 

scends  it,  conquers  even  in  losing?  Never  has  the 
unconquerable  human  soul  shone  out  as  clearly  as 
in  these  last  days;  never  has  selfless  courage  counted 
for  so  much.  Already  the  right  is  victorious,  in  the 
face  of  much  that  seems  defeat  on  more  than  one 
front.  The  deeds  of  which  one  hears  constantly  of 
life  risked  or  lost  for  another  life ;  the  heroic  standing 
of  man  by  man,  and  the  more  than  heroic  standing 
of  all  men  in  these  ghastly  trenches  in  defense  of 
honor  and  fair  play  and  womanhood,  —  in  these 
things  something  greater  than  war  is  won. 

June  20. 

My  young  friend  of  the  stockinged  feet  appeared 
again  to-day.  I  was  able  to  identify  him  —  for  he 
told  me  his  name,  John  Merriwether  Sands  —  as  the 
son  of  the  department  store  recently  established  in 
Mataquoit. 

We  talked  of  many  things;  wars,  and  rumors  of 
wars.  It  surprised  me  to  find  how  untouched  he  was, 
how  little  he  knew  about  the  world  crisis.  A  young 
American,  what  had  he  to  do  with  war?  His 
country,  safe  between  sheltering  seas,  had  long  for- 
gotten war.  A  normal,  healthy,  active,  most  intelli- 
gent youth  —  in  non-academic  ways  —  greatly 
interested  in  athletics.  He  is  a  finer  man  physically 
than  any  I  saw  among  the  young  Canadians  with 
their  eyes  turned  toward  the  east,  yet  there  is  some- 
thing lacking  that  was  in  their  faces.  How  is  it 
possible  to  be  so  untouched,  so  unregarding? 

The  youth  of  half  the  world  goes  up  to  its  Cal- 
vary ;  the  youth  of  this  half  —  plays  football. 

Yet,  unless  I  read  this  boy's  face  wrong,  he  is  one 
fitted  to  march  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  his  fellows. 


28  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

companionable,  sympathetic,  —  where  he  under- 
stands. 

What  veil  has  fallen  before  his  eyes?  What  lack 
of  imaginative  insight,  understanding,  is  here?  Is 
it  that  his  parents,  after  the  fashion  of  American 
parents,  have  kept  him  in  a  child's  world  until  to- 
day? How  can  he  have  failed  to  know,  to  share  the 
anguish  of  Belgium,  the  anguish  of  France? 

I  feel  in  myself  a  yearning  desire  to  help  him 
understand.  Strange  that  one  should  wish  to  waken 
you*1*  to  suffering!  Yet  the  terrible  facts  are  facts; 
anguish  is  the  lot  of  many  millions  to-day,  —  and 
no  man  can  attain  his  full  stature  of  manhood  if  he 
ignore. 


June  25. 

Reminded  myself  again  that  I  must  not  spend,  in 
thought  of  war,  the  mental  energy  which  I  mean  to 
turn  wholly  into  effort  toward  reconstruction.  But 
I  find  myself  at  a  certain  disadvantage,  in  my  idle 
hours,  for  no  great  amount  of  work  has  as  yet  come 
my  way.  Books  I  have,  for  the  most  part,  put  be- 
hind me,  for  the  printed  word  has  failed  me;  I  want 
to  seek  out  wisdom  by  the  seeing  of  the  eyes,  the 
hearing  of  the  ears,  and  the  searching  of  the  heart 
of  man,  including  my  own. 

I  sit  at  my  bench,  with  high  resolve.  If  no  one 
comes  to  me,  save  those  who  have  shoes  to  mend, 
whose  fault  is  it?  If  my  kind  do  not  come  to  me, 
I  will  go  out  to  mingle  with  them. 

I  take  my  hat  and  go  down  to  that  meeting  place 
of  men,  the  village  grocery.  Silence  falls  upon  a 
talkative  group  as  I  enter.  No  one  offers  me  a  barrel 
head  to  sit  on;  the  last  broken  sentence  stays  sus- 
pended in  mid-air,  where  it  was  broken.  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  is  etiquette  for  me  to  find  a  place 
on  the  counter  and  seat  myself  there;  and  no  one 
tells  me.  They  build  a  little  wall  between  me  and 
themselves;  is  this  equality,  fraternity? 

What  is  it?  Distrust?  Do  they  suspect  me  of 
dishonest  intent?  Is  it  that  there  is  no  common 
background,  that  they,  perhaps  unconsciously,  feel 


30  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

that  the  currents  of  our  lives  have  flowed  too  far 
apart  ever  to  mingle? 

Gray-haired,  I  seek  my  kind  and  cannot  find  them. 
The  basis  of  trust  between  man  and  man,  what  is  it? 

I  bought  a  pound  of  cheese  and  went  home.  The 
bystanders  thawed  a  little  when  they  saw  me  pay 
for  the  cheese.  Is  it  simply  money  trust  that  lies 
between  man  and  man? 

Yet  I  begin  to  know  something  of  the  lives  of 
my  neighbors,  if  only  the  outside  circumstances. 
The  Widow  Frayne  has  inexhaustible  information 
about  the  inhabitants  of  Mataquoit,  which  she 
shares  with  me,  yet  I  cannot  help  thinking  that, 
though  she  knows  the  facts,  she  has  somehow  missed 
the  substance  of  understanding.  The  magic  key  of 
sympathy,  of  right  feeling,  is  not  there.  She  sets 
me  to  thinking  of  aspects  of  alleged  progress  during 
our  great  scientific  era;  our  failure  to  understand 
real  significances  has  often  been  in  direct  proportion 
to  the  amount  of  information  we  have  heaped  up 
about  life  and  nature.  There  is  nothing  so  untrue 
as  facts  wrongly  interpreted. 

We  are  an  ordinary  community;  there  must  be 
scores  of  shore  towns  like  this.  From  Round  Towers, 
the  lordly  estate  of  a  great  oil  magnate,  named 
Brown,  on  the  cliffs  north  of  the  village,  and  the 
withdrawn,  fenced-in  mansions  of  the  old  families, 
we  range  through  prosperous  two-story  houses,  and 
white  story-and-a-half  cottages  to  the  unpainted 
wooden  hut  of  old  Mrs.  Mooney,  with  a  roof  that 
slopes  down  the  back  almost  to  the  ground. 

And  I  question  myself,  as  I  sit  by  my  doorway, 
smoking  my  pipe,  or  stroll  up  and  down  the  village 
street,  how  each  and  every  one  of  these  inhabitants 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  31 

is  fulfilling  his  citizenship  in  a  democracy.  For  I 
have  set  myself  the  large  task  —  in  addition  to 
cobbling  —  of  studying  my  fellow  villagers  in  their 
several  relations,  civic  and  domestic,  relations  of 
church  and  of  state.  I  must  watch  in  the  street,  the 
market  place,  the  church,  these  individuals  of  the 
body  politic,  to  discern  their  attitude  toward  a 
citizen's  duties  and  responsibilities.  This  is  a 
microcosm  wherein  I  may  read  in  little  what  is 
written  large  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  this  vast 
country. 

The  task  I  set  before  me  is  not  only  of  under- 
standing, but  of  sympathizing. 

It  is  on  my  tongue  to  say  that  the  postmaster 
shows,  in  his  inadequately  performed  professional 
duties,  the  rust  of  officialdom ;  that  my  friend,  Abel 
Marks,  the  postman,  betrays  the  democracy  in  the 
very  way  he  dawdles  down  the  street,  an  hour  late 
with  the  mail ;  that  my  other  friend,  Joe  Hincks,  the 
policeman  (it  is  of  course  apparent  that  I  have  not 
yet  penetrated  the  polite  circles  of  Mataquoit), 
loses  daily  in  a  seductive  coffee  house  the  sense  he 
should  have,  as  an  American  citizen,  that  the  future 
of  the  world  depends  upon  the  way  in  which  he 
does  his  job;  that  all  Mataquoit  betrays  too  much 
of  slipshod  ease.  It  is  the  young  men  who  trouble 
me  most ;  of  the  many  I  see  on  the  street,  in  shops, 
at  the  railway  station,  a  few  are  alert  and  brisk,  but 
the  majority  with  their  shambling  walk,  their  stoop- 
ing shoulders,  their  hats  tilted  back,  their  evident 
desire  to  appear  worse  than  they  are,  embody  very 
ill  our  hopes  for  the  future  America.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  they  possess  virtues,  are  honest,  good- 
natured,  and  ready  to  spring  at  the  cry  of  need, 


32  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

but  they  lack,  alas!  the  training  necessary  to 
toughen  their  muscles,  to  train  their  minds,  to  set 
their  feet  marching  in  unison  with  some  sense  of  a 
goal. 

I  walk  sadly  by  the  sea,  asking  myself  if  these  and 
others  represent  the  principle  of  freedom  for  which 
the  world  is  fighting ;  then  I  pull  myself  up  sharply. 
This  old  critical  instinct  will  not  down;  how  can  I 
remember  that  this  is  not  a  world  to  pull  apart 
and  analyze,  but  a  world  to  put  together?  We 
must  "hope  evermore  and  believe"  and  act. 

I  will  turn  to  my  cobbler's  bench;  at  least  there 
I  am  putting  in  stitches,  not  ripping  them  out. 

If  I  am  sometimes  discouraged  in  my  attempt  to 
dig  deeper  into  knowledge  of  civic  life  which  shows 
much  of  selfishness,  much  of  petty  motive,  I  realize 
that  I  am  still  a  bit  on  the  outside.  The  inner  sacri- 
fices, the  homely  heroisms  of  Mataquoit  are  not  un- 
rolled before  my  eyes. 

I  will  be  fair;  I  will  be  judicial.  If,  on  one  side  of 
my  ledger,  I  range  personalities  and  incidents  that 
suggest  failure,  on  the  other  I  will  set  down  those 
that  stand  for  success,  or  partial  success,  and  I  will 
endeavor  to  make  this  latter  a  long  list. 

I  could  write,  I  fancy,  an  article  about  Mataquoit 
in  the  fashion  of  the  muck-raking  articles  of  a  dozen 
years  ago,  setting  forth  the  delinquencies,  the  civic 
sins  of  leading  citizens.  .  .  .  Why  not  institute 
another  kind  of  article,  trying  to  rake  together  the 
virtues,  private  and  public,  of  the  inhabitants  of  a 
town,  setting  forth  instances  of  civic  righteousness, 
the  good  achievements?  What  services  the  news- 
papers throughout  the  country  could  render  in  this, 
the  magazines!  Headlines  of  goodness,  as  erstwhile. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  33 

and   even  now,   of   crime.  .    .    .  Three-inch    type 
advertising  civic  virtue,  —  some  prominent  citizen's 
disinterestedness,  as  startling  news. 
I  will  begin,  as  soon  as  I  have  the  facts. 

June  28. 

In  this  great  rushing  together  of  the  nations  we 
are  aware  of  the  conflict  betwen  autocracy  and 
democracy;  and  the  thought  of  this  lends  dignity 
even  to  the  trivial  aspects  of  my  quiet  session  with 
the  democracy  at  home.  I  had  not  thought  to  be 
upon  the  battle  line !  It  is  curious,  the  way  in  which 
my  instinct  has  been  leading  me,  a  humble  indi- 
vidual, along  the  lines  of  cleavage  between  the  na- 
tions, the  earthquake's  path. 

I  have  set  myself  to  consider  what  are  the  prac- 
tical proofs  of  gain  under  a  free  government.  To  find 
these,  one  has  to  dig  below  the  surface  both  of  men 
and  of  towns.  The  untidy  streets,  the  unswept 
corners,  the  floating  bits  of  paper  and  the  stationary 
bits  of  orange  peel  here  contrast  badly  with  the 
spick  and  span  pavements  and  corners  of  autocracy. 
Not  only  Berlin,  but  little  German  villages  present 
a  cleaner  face. 

And  the  upright  bearing,  the  brisk  gait  of  the 
sons  of  autocracy  might  seem  to  bear  witness  in  its 
favor,  as  one  thinks  of  the  shuffling  feet,  of  the  lazy 
slouch  of  many  of  our  free  sons  of  America.  Should 
not  the  citizen  of  a  free  country  stand  upright? 

Digging  deeper,  beneath  externals,  one  knows  of 
course  that  there  is  no  comparison.  Better  the 
sorriest  disorder  of  a  world  stumbling  along  the 
ways  of  freedom  than  an  orderly  imperialism  where 
no  man  is  free.  Better  that  men  should  greet  one 


34 

another  with  easy  impudence,  than  that  they  should 
click  their  heels  and  make  servile  obeisance  to  officers 
and  excellencies  whose  hold  over  them  is  a  hold  of 
brute  force.  Liberty  is  a  priceless  boon;  only 
through  this  can  the  right  development  of  the  in- 
dividual man  come,  but  should  not  a  citizen  of  a 
republic  achieve  by  self-discipline  more  than  can 
be  wrought  in  an  autocracy  by  discipline  from  with- 
out? How  are  we  to  outgrow  all  our  slovenly  and 
unlovely  ways,  all  manifestations  of  our  freedom  to 
lounge  and  sit  and  sprawl  in  public  as  we  please? 
An  old  and  flippant  saying,  heard  long  ago  with  a 
sense  of  tolerant  amusement,  that  it  is  the  mission 
of  America  to  vulgarize  the  world,  now  brings  me 
sharp  pain.  One  can  but  confess  that  the  incentive 
of  liberty  of  action  does  not  as  yet  seem  so  cogent, 
in  matters  of  street  behaviour  at  least,  as  does  pres- 
sure applied  from  above.  I  see  no  accord  between 
the  untidiness  of  mind  and  body,  betrayed  in  much 
of  our  practice,  and  our  institutions,  our  opportunity 
to  achieve  citizenship  of  a  finer  type  than  the  world 
has  yet  seen. 

Yet,  as  I  hear  man  talking  with  man  in  the  streets, 
I  am  impressed  by  the  general  intelligence.  These 
men  are  reading  about  the  war  and  know  not  only 
its  events  but  something  of  its  bearing.  I  hear  them 
discussing  the  atrocities,  and  in  the  often  uncouth 
comments  I  find  proof  that  our  country  has  made 
great  gain,  whatever  unrealized  aspects  of  true 
democracy  may  be  here.  There  is  profound  con- 
tempt for  force  as  force  among  these  men,  high  and 
low,  kempt  and  unkempt. 

If  one  hundred  and  ten  million  citizens  already 
know  that  might  does  not  mean  right,  freedom  is 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  35 

justified  of  her  children,  atrocious  though  their 
manners  be. 

To  the  good  also  might  be  counted  a  good  nature, 
a  tolerance,  a  surface  friendliness,  an  amiable  sense 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  man.  Americans  on  the 
streets  and  the  street  corners  give  you  the  impres- 
sion of  feeling  that  they  are  all  good  fellows  together 
in  a  fairly  good  worlcj. 

Yet  in  this  very  tolerance  is  a  danger,  —  for  it 
carries  with  it  a  disregard  of  standards,  even  a  resent- 
ment. There  is  a  tendency  to  call  a  man  with  con- 
viction one  deep  in  his  own  conceit. 

June  30. 

In  my  adventure  into  democracy  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  tell  how  much  I  owe  to  Tim.  To  know  him 
is  a  liberal  education,  at  least  in  cobbling.  To  begin 
with,  he  understands  the  business,  which  I  do  not. 
He  knows  the  old  customers  and  gives  them  warm 
welcome,  snuffing  at  their  shoes  as  if  he  knew  where 
they  ought  to  be  worn  out.  He  is  able  to  discern, 
in  some  occult  way,  through  his  sensitive,  slightly 
lifted  nostrils,  which  of  my  visitors  come  with  bona 
fide  business  motive,  which  are  drawn  by  idle  curi- 
osity to  find  out  something  about  the  new  master  of 
the  shop.  These  he  embarrasses  by  sniffing  at  their 
shoes.  He  knows  all  there  is  to  know  about  boys. 

The  art  of  advertising  he  understands  to  perfec- 
tion, barking  always  at  the  right  minute.  Well- 
known  figures  are  greeted  by  a  single,  short,  sharp 
bark,  as  if  by  way  of  suggestion  that  business  is 
going  on  at  the  old  stand ;  strangers  are  startled  by 
prolonged,  vociferous  barking,  as  if  Tim  were  de- 
termined that  they  should  look  up  and  see  my  sign. 


36  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

He  is  an  incorruptible  guardian ;  I  can  leave  him 
in  charge  indefinitely,  with  the  shop  door  open,  and 
not  so  much  as  a  shoe  string  will  disappear.  If  one 
ever  should  disappear,  I  know  it  will  be  over  his 
dead  body. 

I  am  learning  democracy  of  my  dog;  he  has  an 
almost  ideal  attitude  toward  his  fellow  creatures, 
though  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  he  thinks  democ- 
racy needs  a  deal  of  watching. 

He  is  an  admirable  "mixer";  I  often  look  at  him 
with  envy,  marvelling  at  his  art  of  making  friends. 
He  evidently  finds  no  difficulty  whatever  in  under- 
standing humankind  and  drawing  near  it.  A  sniff, 
a  swift  look,  a  more  or  less  tentative  wagging  of  the 
tail;  then,  if  the  stranger  is  found  worthy,  a  lick 
on  the  hand  with  a  friendly  tongue,  a  snuggling  trot 
at  the  heels,  invitations  to  be  caressed  on  head  and 
ears,  —  leading  to  complete  understanding,  com- 
plete intimacy. 

I  wonder,  wistfully,  how  he  does  it;  perhaps  all 
is  different  when  one  has  a  tail  to  wag.  It  seems 
unfair  for  certain  of  nature's  creatures  to  have  so 
much  more  potent  means  of  expression  than  others. 
Language  is  a  poor  substitute  for  some  that  we  have 
foregone. 


VI 


July  2. 

It  strikes  me  that,  during  the  last  few  days, 
people  crowd  my  shop  with  more  than  necessary 
insistence.  Men,  women,  boys,  girls,  come  bringing 
shoes  for  repairing;  my  shop  corners  are  piled  high 
with  slippers,  boots,  and  shoes,  some  of  which  seem 
in  little  need  of  mending.  There  must  be  some 
rumour  about  the  newcomer;  curiosity  is  the  best 
advertiser.  Perhaps  my  lack  of  skill  makes  them 
suspicious.  I  take  care  to  be  putting  in  pegs  or 
waxing  my  thread  when  customers  are  here,  lest 
they  see  how  awkward  I  am  with  my  needle. 

They  have  brought  me  more  shoe  problems  than 
I  can  cope  with,  for  I  have  not  been  long  a  cobbler 
and  sadly  need  practice.  Yet  it  is  the  only  profes- 
sion that  I  have  ever  had,  and  I  take  pride  in  it. 
The  Scotchman  who  taught  me,  Angus  McDonell, 
up  in  Ontario  by  the  lake  where  I  was  fishing  last 
summer,  predicted  no  great  future  for  me  in  this 
work. 

"Mon,"  he  said,  when  I  began,  "if  your  fingers 
was  all  great  toes  you  couldna'  handle  the  needle 
worse." 

I  resolved  to  show  that  Scotchman,  for  I  shall  not 
be  done  by  dispraise  out  of  my  life  work.  In  fact, 
before  I  left  him  to  return  to  the  States,  I  half- 
soled  a  pair  of  boots  for  him,  charging  him  nothing, 
and  he  said  that  they  "were  na  so  badly  done." 


38  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

He  added  that  if  I  were  but  five  and  twenty  years 
younger,  it  would  come  easier.  I  had  suspected  this 
myself,  but  a  man  is  not  to  blame  for  his  many 
years. 

There  is  not  much  time  for  thinking,  yet  this  is 
perhaps  well  for  me  who,  since  boyhood,  have  done 
little  but  think.  These  days  bring  sharper  and 
sharper  realization  of  a  life  unused;  I  must  double 
my  efforts  to  find  a  place  in  the  actual  working 
order  of  our  commonwealth.  I  who  have  existed, 
for  five  full  decades,  outside  of  life,  have  suffered 
life  rather  than  lived  it,  must  do  my  bit,  even  if 
it  be  hard,  discouraging;  even  if  the  stitches  which 
I  put  into  old  Mrs.  White's  second-best  pair  of  shoes 
will  not  hold.  So  may  I  escape  from  the  mist  of 
special  privilege  and  the  maze  of  words  and  of  ab- 
stract thought  that  have  encompassed  my  years, 
and,  perchance,  touch  reality. 

July  5. 

My  young  friend,  John  Merriweather  Sands,  put 
his  head  through  my  window  to-day  and  gave  me 
cheerful  greeting.  To  tell  truth,  I  had  been  think- 
ing about  him  and  wishing  that  he  would  come. 

I  gravely  asked  him  if  he  had  brought  me  any 
business. 

"No,  but  you  don't  mind  my  watching  you,  do 
you?"  he  asked.  "I  might  learn  your  trade;  I  am 
not  good  at  books." 

I  invited  him  in  and  gave  him  a  lesson  in  cutting 
out  leather  for  soling  a  boot.  It  was  not  many 
minutes  before  he  did  it  better  than  I,  but  I  did  not 
tell  him  so.  Where  would  the  teaching  profession 
be  if  we  admitted  these  things? 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  39 

I  told  him  that  he  must  practise,  and  might  do 
so  whenever  he  wished;  I  realized  that  I  wanted 
him  to  come  back. 

He  was  chaffing  much  of  the  time;  asking  me 
sudden  questions  about  Memorial  Hall  at  Harvard, 
the  Yale  campus,  the  Alumni  building  at  Princeton, 
the  architecture  of  the  Leland  Stanford  buildings. 
I  was  wary  enough  to  evade  direct  answers,  not  that 
there  is  any  reason  for  concealment,  for  his  curiosity 
is  wholly  friendly,  but  that  it  is  amusing  to  play 
the  man  of  mystery  with  him. 

I  slowly  make  him  out.  He  is  no  student;  he 
has  an  eager,  intelligent  mind,  but  it  does  not  find 
its  best  nurture  in  books ;  rather,  in  men  and  things. 
He  is  interested  in  people  and  has  all  the  friendli- 
ness and  faith  in  human  nature  of  an  unhurt  young 
puppy,  a  young  Newfoundland  puppy  whom  no- 
body has  ever  struck.  Here  is  boundless  energy,  as 
yet  unfocussed.  He  is  a  great  athlete,  full  of  love 
of  the  game  and  of  fair  play  in  the  game,  and  herein 
lies  much  unconscious  chivalry.  So  far,  his  sole 
sense  of  responsibility  has  come  through  athletics. 
He  is  sympathetic  with  any  suffering  he  can 
see,  as  yet  incapable  (perhaps  long  ancestral 
habit  is  responsible  for  this)  of  imagining  any 
suffering  that  he  does  not  see;  honest  as  the 
daylight;  quick  to  wrath  in  a  good  cause  that  he 
understands;  almost  wholly  unaware  of  the  world 
of  ideas  in  which  I  have  spent  my  life.  He  is  still 
largely,  I  think,  saying  over  his  father's  and  mother's 
ideas,  —  and  rather  poor  they  are.  We  talked  much 
about  the  war,  and  I  told  him  that  he  and  his  fellows 
could  not  afford  to  miss  anything  that  would  make 
them  understand  the  appalling  disaster  that  had 


40  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

come  upon  mankind,  or  the  efforts  of  those  who 
were  struggling  to  help ;  that  it  was  upon  his  genera- 
tion that  the  task  of  rebuilding  the  world  would  fall. 

No  one  could  be  more  utterly  unlike  my  own  son, 
if  I  had  one ;  why  do  I  yearn  over  him  in  a  kind  of 
vicarious  parenthood? 

As  he  went  to-day,  calling  out  with  a  laugh, 
"Good-by,  Socrates,"  I  was  stung  by  a  sudden,  deep 
desire  to  help  him  make  good,  to  have  him  make 
good  at  any  cost.  Then  I  pulled  myself  up  in  aston- 
ishment. What  do  I  mean,  at  my  age,  by  a  desire 
so  intense,  by  feeling  thus  keenly  about  somebody 
else's  son,  a  son  of  people  I  do  not  even  know? 

Sons  of  people  I  do  not  know  have  been  ignored 
in  my  life  hitherto. 

July  6. 

My  mind  is  at  times  a  bit  bewildered  by  the  con- 
trast between  the  varied  aspects  of  this  simple  and 
friendly  world  and  the  sudden  gulfs  that  yawn  at 
one's  feet. 

In  spite  of  my  resolution  to  fix  my  mind  upon 
the  world  beyond  the  war,  in  and  out,  and  in  and 
out  of  all  our  peaceful  days  and  ways  the  war  goes 
winding ;  across  the  beauty  of  summer  meadows  with 
their  daisies  and  their  sorrel,  one  sees  the  long  lines 
of  pictured  transports  and  pictured  troop  trains,  the 
loaded  camions,  the  faces  of  soldiers  bravely  smiling 
good-by  out  of  the  car  windows.  Such  pictures  move 
on  in  one's  mind,  a  thin,  endless  film,  before  the 
actual  scene  that  one  is  looking  upon.  And,  more 
insistent  still,  come  the  pictures  of  actual  trench 
attack,  the  storming,  the  going  over  the  top,  the 
gray-white  smoke  rising  after  the  explosions.  One 


A   WORLD    TO   MEND  41 

sees  the  British  soldiers  swinging  into  line,  going  out, 
singing,  to  battle;  one  sees  the  laughing  faces  of 
those,  fewer  in  number,  who  come  back  cheering  and 
throwing  their  caps  high  into  the  air. 

One  is  haunted  by  bits  of  description  read  and 
memories  of  pictures  seen,  and  on  the  dim  confines 
of  sleep  one  sees  great  guns  in  desolate  lands  where 
you  can  see  the  face  of  no  living  thing.  As  they 
lift  their  heads,  belching  out,  like  undreamed 
monsters,  fire  and  smoke,  it  seems  the  place  of 
dragons  of  which  the  Hebrew  prophets  wrote,  with 
broken,  shattered  branches  and  blasted  tree  trunks, 
showing  that  the  world  was  once  alive. 

The  intense  preoccupation  of  many  of  us  with  this 
grim  struggle  is  almost  a  proof  that  that  which  men 
are  fighting  for  is  already  partly  achieved.  It  is 
shaping  our  present  selves,  as  it  is  shaping  the  future 
destinies  of  the  world.  We  never  escape  from  this 
war  and  the  thought  of  it;  we  are  prisoners  all.  It 
is  as  if  destiny  were  saying:  Henceforth  thou  shalt 
not  escape  the  bonds  of  thy  brother's  soul.  Every- 
thing turns  to  it;  it  is  the  undercurrent  of  all  our 
thoughts,  and  has  been,  since  August,  1914.  Every 
line  of  thought  takes  us(  ultimately,  back  to  it ;  every 
book  that  we  open  has,  somewhere,  that  within  its 
pages  which  reminds  us.  There  is  no  path  so  peace- 
ful that  it  fails  to  lead  us  to  those  bloody  battle 
fields;  the  courage  of  those  who  fight  and  fall  there 
is  a  measure  for  our  after  years.  Along  all  the  ways 
of  life  and  suffering  it  has  set  minds  and  hearts 
stirring,  with  a  deepened  sense  of  the  significance 
of  human  experience. 

Even  Tim,  sleeping  in  the  sunshine,  his  head  on 
one  paw,  dreaming  of  the  bone  last  gnawed  and  of 


42  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  bone  to  come,  —  even  Tim,  in  these  tragic  days 
of  continued  loss,  is  more  than  Tim.  He  is  all  the 
dogs  of  France,  of  Belgium,  waiting  by  the  roadside 
or  at  the  shell  of  the  old  home,  for  the  lost  master 
to  come  back;  all  the  shell-torn,  frightened  dogs  of 
all  the  martyred  towns  and  villages. 

He  is  all  the  patient  pack  dogs  of  the  refugees, 
helping  drag  the  family  burden,  clothing,  bedding, 
kitchen  utensils,  babies,  grandmother. 

He  is  all  the  brave  dogs  of  the  battle  fields,  search- 
ing untiringly  for  human  wounded,  as  selfless  in 
devotion,  as  utterly  given  to  human  service,  as  if 
his  kind  had  not  been  kicked  and  maltreated,  tor- 
tured, vivisected  on  the  rack  for  real  or  fancied 
human  progress.  Humanity  betrays  them ;  they  love 
on,  and  serve.  .  .  .  Already  Red  Cross  Dogs  are 
enrolled  among  the  saints. 

July  8. 

I  heard  two  men  speaking  as  they  were  passing 
my  window.  Said  one :  "Some  think  he  is  a  German 

spy." 

As  they  went  on,  I  heard  a  half  remark  about 
hands  that  looked  unused  to  working  and  about 
letters  that  came  with  foreign  postmarks. 

So  this  is  what  results  from  trying  to  be  one  with 
my  kind!  I  eat  and  sleep  and  work  exactly  as  the 
rest  of  them  do,  except  that  I  work  harder  than 
many.  Yet  I  am  uncomfortably  aware  that  I  am 
something  of  a  mystery  to  them,  a  man  apart.  And 
I  regret  my  whole  past  life,  —  that  study  of  exclu- 
sions, preferences,  that  laborious  fitting  myself  not 
to  be  one  with  my  fellows. 

My  young  friend  Jack  took  this  question  up  with 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  43 

me  one  day;  this  use  of  his  first  name  follows  his 
shy  suggestion  that  everybody  calls  him  Jack.  He 
drops  in  frequently,  with  tennis  racquet  or  golf 
clubs,  to  sit  in  my  armchair  or  on  the  section  of  a 
huge  log  standing  endwise  in  the  corner,  to  watch 
me  work,  talking  to  me  in  a  picturesque  slang,  which 
I  am  often  at  a  loss  to  understand.  If  I  like,  more 
even  than  I  admit  to  myself,  to  have  him  come, 
I  do  not  say  so;  a  cobbler  should  be  a  man  of  few 
words. 

Of  late  his  manner  has  been  slightly  protective. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  with  embarrassed  kindliness, 
"people  are  saying  rather  nasty  things  about  you; 
suspecting  things.  They've  got  a  hunch  that  some- 
thing's wrong." 

"Don't  I  give  the  right  change?"  I  asked  him 
anxiously. 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  of  that  kind,  but  you  never  tell 
anything  about  what  you  did  before  you  came 
here  — " 

"And  cobbling,"  I  suggested,  "is  a  favorite  pursuit 
in  a  place  I  will  not  mention.  Cheer  them  up  by 
telling  them  that  if  my  term  had  been  a  long  one, 
I  should  have  learned  my  trade  better.  No,  you 
may  as  well  assure  them  at  once  that  I  have  never 
robbed  a  bank." 

There  is  nothing  in  life  that  I  like  better  than  to 
hear  this  boy  laugh. 

"Nobody  has  suggested  yet  that  you've  done  time, 
but  I  did  hear  Phil  Landers  say  that  you  'don't  talk 
English  like  folks  in  Mataquoit.' ' 

"I  admit  it,"  said  I.    "Thank  God  for  that!" 

Jack  flung  his  cap  into  the  corner;  it  was  clear 
that  his  task  was  not  to  his  liking. 


44  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

"Oh,  but  you  told  him  that  you  had  come  here  to 
turn  over  a  new  leaf,  to  start  out  fresh.  Now  you 
know  what  a  small  town  is;  lots  of  people  are  just 
waiting  for  bones  to  pick.  Maybe  it  would  be  better 
for  you  to  ante  up  and  tell  them  who  and  what  you 
are,  and  where  you  pitched  your  tent  before.  I 
haven't  the  least  curiosity,  you  know;  it  is  just  that 
they  can  make  it  beastly  unpleasant  for  you.  You 
see,  in  this  country,  you  pay  high  for  being  some- 
thing of  a  philosopher.  In  circles  like  ours  it  isn't 
done." 

"But  I've  given  them  my  real  name;  there  is 
nothing  to  tell  them." 

"Oh,  yes.  there  is!  Tell  them  how  you  came  by 
hands  that  look  like  that !  And  by  your  vocabulary ; 
and  your  books.  I've  never  told  them  anything 
about  your  Greek  books,  but  they've  found  out  some- 
how." 

"It  couldn't  be  Tim,"  I  suggested. 

He  laughed.  "You  know  and  I  know  that  you 
can  trust  a  dog." 

"My  vocabulary  isn't  so  extensive,"  I  told  him. 
"Such  as  it  is,  I  achieved  it  in  spite  of  a  college 
education." 

"What  college?"  said  the  boy. 

"Your  own,"  I  admitted. 

"Well,  what's  wrong  with  your  past,  anyway?" 

"Nothing.  It  is  irreproachable,  so  far  as  acts  go. 
That's  the  trouble;  I've  never  done  anything,  even 
anything  bad.  I  have  sat  still  and  let  life  happen. 
It's  the  sins  of  omission,  my  boy,  that  count  most 
heavily;  of  these  you  must  not,  like  myself,  be 
guilty.'" 

We  sat  long  in  the  late  afternoon,  talking;  then 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  45 

Jack  went  away,  remarking  that  he  would  reassure 
Mataquoit  about  the  bank.  It  is  long  since  I  have 
enjoyed  anything  so  much  as  watching  Jack's  face 
when  I  talked  to  him;  for  a  face  so  ruddy  and  so 
boyish,  it  is  extraordinarily  expressive;  there  is 
something  there  quickly  and  sensitively  responsive; 
I  almost  have  the  feeling  of  playing  on  him  as  if 
he  were  a  stringed  instrument. 

He  rouses  all  the  creative  instinct  there  is  within 
me;  over  and  over  something  within  me  keeps  say- 
ing: "I  will  make  me  a  citizen  of  this  young  man." 
I  want  him  to  act,  to  play  his  part,  to  realize  early 
his  responsibilities  to  his  fellow  man.  In  some 
strange  fashion,  in  him  my  unlived  life  seems  there 
still  to  live;  here  seems  almost  a  chance  to  begin 
over  again,  with  all  one's  experience  to  aid.  I  share 
his  youth,  its  audacities,  its  uncertainties,  its  resolu- 
tions; and  I  find  my  passionate  interest  in  getting 
him  started  overmastering  all  other  interests. 

I  find  the  human  race  more  interesting  because  of 
him. 


VII 


July  9. 

Shopkeeping  Mataquoit  unlocks  its  doors  betimes 
and  offers  its  wares ;  rural  Mataquoit  drives  in  with 
produce  and  drives  away;  ancestral  Mataquoit,  if 
I  may  put  it  that  way,  comes  out  to  purchase,  then 
goes  back  to  click  its  wrought-iron  gates  behind  it, 
shutting  the  world  out.  Possibly  in  town  meeting 
the  walls  of  class  break  down  a  bit,  but  in  church,  as 
on  the  street  and  in  the  market  place,  the  line  of 
cleavage  is  unmistakable.  Though  I  am  learning 
much  by  regarding  my  New  England  from  the  bot- 
tom up,  instead  of  from  the  top  down,  I  find  it  the 
same  old  world,  with  the  same  laissez-faire  attitude 
of  which  I  and  my  kind  have  always  been  guilty. 

It  is  this  New  England  on  whose  shores  Pilgrim 
feet  first  stepped  that  is  the  greatest  culprit,  the 
country  over,  a  slacker  in  the  great  task  of  democ- 
racy. She  sits  supinely  on  a  wreck  of  ancestral 
achievement,  counting  genealogies  when  she  should 
be  girding  her  loins  for  the  struggle,  should  be  find- 
ing new  ways  to  pass  on  to  newcomers  the  principles 
inherited  from  our  forefathers.  She  cherishes  as 
keen  a  sense  of  caste  as  England  cherishes,  some- 
times without  justification  in  the  matter  of  actual 
family  history,  and  without  the  inherited  feudal 
sense  of  responsibility  for  the  lower  that  has  lent 
humanity  to  the  system  as  it  exists  in  England. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  47 

In  this  New  England,  which  should  be  a  fountain 
pure  and  undefiled  of  democracy,  is  an  intellectual 
and  spiritual  shiftlessness  of  which  I  am  ashamed. 

For  I  am  not  attacking;  I  am  confessing. 

Measuring  my  fifty  odd  years  by  this  new  measure 
of  a  great  and  terrible  time  which  demands  that  a 
man  shall  be  wholly  a  man,  I  find  them  failure.  I 
look  back  upon  much  appreciated,  gladly  received, 
accepted  with  a  not  undiscerning  taste.  What  to 
accept,  what  to  reject,  I  have,  in  a  way,  known.  But 
I  have  been  more  or  less  passive;  too  much  have  I 
let  life  be  a  spectacle,  passing  before  my  eyes;  I 
have  not  played  my  part.  The  stamp  of  my  finer 
critical  judgment  I  have  not  left  anywhere  upon  my 
country;  the  masses  do  not  know  through  me  any 
better  how  to  choose.  My  insight,  my  fastidious- 
ness will  die  with  me.  ...  A  man  must  do  posi- 
tive things  and  must  hand  himself  to  the  future,  if 
not  physically,  then  intellectually  and  spiritually. 
Many  men  do  both. 

It  may  be  partly  because  the  formative  years  of 
my  life  were  passed  in  a  period  critical,  analytical, 
with  lijttle  of  the  vigor  of  active  faith  anywhere, 
and  little  of  creative  activity.  There  was  a  dead 
stagnation  about  those  years  of  the  eighties  and  the 
early  nineties;  it  was  ebb  tide  in  religious,  in  intel- 
lectual, and  in  national  life.  The  causes  of  this  are 
too  subtle  for  complete  analysis,  but  some  of  them 
are  fairly  clear.  The  great  wave  of  all-conquering 
scientific  dogmatism  had  somewhat  spent  itself,  but 
mankind  was  sitting  paralyzed  under  the  shock  of 
it.  It  had  proved  less  potent  than  had  been  ex- 
pected in  solving  all  human  problems,  but  there  was 
nothing  as  yet  to  take  its  place.  In  our  national 


48  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

life  there  was  a  sense  of  deadness,  a  lack  of  great 
issues,  little  to  strike  fire  in  the  heart  of  youth. 

And  the  great  university  at  which  I  was  educated 
I  find  partly  at  fault.  It  should  have  made  me 
aware  of  the  vital  issues  of  existence ;  it  should  have 
trained  me  to  be  less  a  critic,  more  an  actor  in  life, 
with  deeper  concern  for  the  part  I  was  to  play  there- 
in. One  thing  and  one  thing  only  it  taught  me 
thoroughly,  —  how  to  keep  apart  from  my  kind. 

It  was  only  through  athletics  that  men  gained  a 
sense  of  the  necessity  of  unity  of  life  and  of  effort, 
of  a  goal,  something  to  win  through  struggle, 
through  fair  play.  All  this  has  grown  since  my  day, 
till  it  threatens  to  absorb  the  whole  of  college  life. 
To  Jack,  I  can  see,  it  represents  the  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  university  training.  But  my  slight  bodily 
infirmity  kept  me  out  of  athletics,  as  it  is  keeping 
me  now  out  of  France. 

One  cannot  blame  the  country  at  large  for  its 
waning  spiritual  morale  in  those  days,  but  I  most 
keenly  censure  this  institution  which  should  have 
been  a  stronghold  of  faith  and  inspiration.  Here, 
certainties  of  thought  and  of  action  should  be  held 
high  above  all  ebb  and  change;  the  dignity  of  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  effort  should  be  forever  main- 
tained. 

But  this  was  the  golden  age  of  the  mere  con- 
noisseur, the  dilettante,  the  man  who  watched,  not 
shared,  life.  My  alma  mater  taught  me  surfaces, 
polish,  plausibilities,  taught  me  to  talk  more  or  less 
knowingly  of  other  men's  achievement;  taught  me 
the  analytical  methods  of  an  analytical  age.  It  never 
taught  me  to  achieve.  My  fellow  alumni  say,  with 
an  air  of  finali ty,  "I  do  not  like  this  or  that"  —  which 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  49 

some  other  man  has  done;  rarely  do  I  hear  on  their 
lips:  "I  have  done  this  or  that."  To  comment  with 
taste  on  the  achievements  of  others,  for  the  most 
part  with  polite  disapproval,  more  rarely  with  some 
slight  measure  of  praise,  was  considered  enough.  As 
I  look  back  upon  it  all,  I  can  see  that  this  was 
almost  treason,  in  a  democratic  country,  where  the 
weight  of  the  national  life  should  rest  on  each  man's 
shoulders,  —  this  failure  to  teach  us  to  do  or  die; 
this  teaching  that  amused  comment  on  the  work  of 
others  was  sufficient.  How  many  of  my  classmates, 
like  myself,  have  drifted  up  and  down  the  tide  of 
life  in  the  country,  not  sharing,  not  caring,  annoyed 
by  vulgar  tastes  and  corrupt  politics,  but  not  trying 
to  better  things! 

More  and  more  I  realize  that  the  great  thing  need- 
ful here  is  a  profound  sense  on  the  part  of  the  privi- 
leged of  democratic  responsibility,  an  accounting  to 
the  people  for  every  grain  of  ability,  of  finer  emo- 
tion, of  deeper  insight. 

July  10. 

I  had  resolutely  put  out  of  sight  everything  that 
would  place  barriers  between  me  and  my  kind. 
Books  which  I  bring  to  the  shop  to  while  away  the 
hours  when  I  am  not  working  I  usually  hide.  To- 
day Jack,  rummaging  in  my  box  of  waste  leather, 
discovered  my  Greek  Testament,  and  held  it  up, 
whistling. 

"My  mother,"  he  remarked,  with  a  twinkle,  "is 
making  trouble  for  me.  She  says  that  I  shall  do 
worse  than  ever  in  college  if  I  spend  so  much  time 
with  an  ignorant  man." 

"Meaning  me?"  I  asked. 


50  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

"Meaning  you." 

There  is  something  in  the  twinkle  in  Jack's  eye 
which  exactly  responds  to  something  which  I  feel 
in  my  own. 

Later  in  the  day  I  was  surprised  by  a  visit  from 
a  lady. 

I  had  not  known  how  hard  1  was  trying  to  bring 
up  my  young  friend  so  that  he  would  be  aware  of 
his  responsibilities  in  this  world  which  is  being  re- 
created before  our  eyes  as  in  the  first  day,  until  his 
mother  came  to  tell  me  not  to  try  to  influence  him. 

I  admit  that  my  first  glance  at  Mrs.  Sands  preju- 
diced me  a  bit  against  her,  for  my  eyes  were  bent 
over  my  cobbler's  bench,  and  I  saw  her  feet  first. 
I  have  an  excessive  dislike  of  seeing  middle-aged 
ladies  in  short  skirts,  with  shoes  whose  several  inches 
of  heel  and  pointed  toes  belie  the  intelligence  of  their 
owners.  These  ladies  usually  look  hot  and  tired 
and  ought  to  rouse  a  feeling  of  pity,  but  they  do  not. 

She  told  me  her  name,  and  I  rose  to  offer  her  the 
one  chair  my  shop  contains. 

She  had  on  a  smart  sailor  hat,  suitable  for  sixteen ; 
a  string  of  pearls ;  a  white  veil,  hugely  dotted.  She 
was  not  at  all  unlike  the  picture  I  had  made  of  her 
in  my  mind  as  I  touched  this  or  that  insensitive 
spot  in  her  son,  though  I  should  not,  of  course,  have 
been  equal  to  all  the  details  of  her  fashionable  cos- 
tume. The  wide  stripes  of  her  skirt,  for  instance,  I 
could  never  have  imagined. 

I  saw  at  once  that  she  was  up-to-date;  that  she 
was  prominent  in  affairs.  I  wondered  at  once  how 
many  clubs  she  belonged  to;  perhaps  as  many  as 
there  were  black  buttons  on  her  white  shoes. 

She  told  me  that  she  would  like  to  have  me  take 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  51 

a  stitch  in  the  handle  of  her  shopping  bag;  and,  as 
I  did  so,  suspecting  that  the  stitches  had  been  cut 
to  give  her  an  excuse  for  entering,  she  studied  me 
closely,  while  her  tongue  ran  on.  Jack  had  spoken 
to  her  of  me,  she  said,  not  without  condescension; 
she  understood  from  him  that  I  was  quite  a  char- 
acter. 

I  could  see  that  she  wanted  me  to  understand  dis- 
tinctly that  she  did  not  belong  to  Mataquoit;  she 
was  not  a  small-town  woman,  but  a  woman  of  the 
world.  Yes,  they  would  spend  next  winter  here, 
but  they  were  really  only  summer  residents;  her 
husband  was  getting  his  business  here  started, — 
she  called  it  his  Establishment.  Jack  would  be 
away  at  college;  she  dreaded  the  loneliness  and  the 
lack  of  intellectual  companionship  in  Mataquoit. 

As  her  rapid  speech  flowed  on,  I  learned  that  she 
was  an  adherent  of  the  school  of  New  Thought,  a 
pacifist,  and  that  she  held  other  convictions  that 
are  the  very  foam  on  the  crest  of  the  advancing  wave 
of  our  alleged  civilization.  While  I  was  marvelling 
at  these  uninvited  confidences,  made  to  a  mere 
cobbler,  she  came  to  the  point  with  astonishing  di- 
rectness. She  had  felt  that  I  was  exercising  an 
undue  influence  on  her  boy. 

"But,  Mrs.  Sands,  what  can  I  have  said  or  done?" 

She  flushed  a  little  and  moved  unsteadily  about, 
—  nobody  could  stand  squarely  on  those  heels. 

"You  said  that,  after  the  Germans  crossed  the 
Belgian  line,  there  was,  for  any  thinking  person,  but 
one  side  to  the  question.  Now  I  know  perfectly 
conscientious  people,  people  of  lovely  characters, 
who  think  that  Germany  was  justified." 

"Madam,"  I  answered,  "you  must  pardon  me,  but 


52  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

I  belong  to  on  old-fashioned  school,  believing  in  the 
essentially  sacred  nature  of  agreements." 

I  shall,  thank  Heaven,  get  none  of  her  foolish 
shoes  to  mend! 

"You  told  him  that  it  was  our  responsibility;  that 
we  ought  to  be  helping  England  and  France,  who 
were  fighting  our  battles." 

I  was  puzzled,  for  I  was  not  conscious  of  having 
said  all  these  things,  I  who  had  come  to  Mataquoit 
to  learn,  not  teach.  I  must  have  been  thinking 
aloud. 

Fighting  was  terrible,  she  went  on ;  didn't  I  think 
so?  My  question  as  to  whether  the  loss  of  our 
national  honor  would  not  be  greater  if  we  went  on 
letting  the  right  be  crushed  brought  from  her  the 
response  that  no  sacrifice  could  be  too  great  if  it 
kept  us  out  of  war. 

I  was  forced  to  say  at  last: 

"But,  Madam,  you  talk  to  me  as  if  I  were  the 
butcher's  dog,  and  advocated  fighting  for  fighting's 
sake.  Like  you,  I  think  peace  the  greatest  thing  on 
earth;  I  should  choose  peace,  always,  if  there  were 
a  choice.  But  here  we  have  no  choice ;  we  ought  to 
be  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  those  who  are 
fighting  for  the  right." 

The  indictment  continued :  I  had  obtained  a  hold 
on  Jack,  partly  through  what  I  said ;  partly  through 
books  about  the  war  I  had  lent  him.  Did  I  not 
think  it  a  pity  that  the  mind  of  youth  should  be 
soiled  by  these  things?  Jack  was  not  a  reader;  he 
might  have  escaped  knowledge  of  much  of  the 
horror.  It  meant  so  much  to  have  the  young  grow 
up  happy  that  she  had  tried  to  keep  all  knowledge  of 
unpleasant  things  from  her  son.  Such  a  joyous 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  53 

youth  he  had  had!  It  was  better  not  to  let  the 
young  know  how  hard  life  was;  this  modern  system 
of  education,  which  made  everything  easy,  was  much 
wiser  than  the  old.  Did  I  not  think  so? 

I  did  not.  It  was  surprising  how  quickly  my 
views  in  regard  to  the  modern  system  of  pedagogy 
ripened  under  the  gaze  of  those  restless  blue  eyes. 

It  was  much  better  for  him  not  to  know  what 
Germany  was  doing ;  she  wanted  her  son  to  keep  his 
little-boy  faith  in  humanity.  It  was  as  if  I  had 
observed  the  female  ostrich  instructing  her  young 
in  the  art  of  keeping  its  head  under  the  sand. 

No,  I  did  not  agree  with  her  in  any  point  whatso- 
ever. I  told  her  so  in  much  detail,  punctuating,  I 
fear,  my  remarks  with  my  awl.  This  may  not  have 
been  polite. 

What  treachery  you  have  been  guilty  of,  you 
parents  of  to-day,  in  teaching  your  children  that 
there  is  nothing  hard  in  life!  It  is  as  if  you  were 
scouts,  on  ahead,  knowing  perfectly  well  that  a  huge 
enemy  force  is  there,  and  that  there  has  got  to  be 
fighting;  as  if  you  came  back  with  this  knowledge 
and  told  the  young  that  there  was  no  one  there. 
Treachery,  cruelty,  Madam !  Life  is  damnably  hard 
(I  beg  your  pardon),  and  the  young  ought  to  be 
prepared  for  it.  Life  is  a  battle,  whatever  way 
you  take  it,  and  the  young  have  got  to  fight  it. 
Heaven  help  those  who  have  to  face  it  so  kinder- 
gartened,  so  Montessoried,  so  emasculated  that  they 
will  sit  down  and  cry  at  the  first  round. 

How  much  of  this  I  said  to  Mrs.  Sands  I  have  no 
idea.  The  man  within  me  who  does  the  thinking 
sometimes  has  a  bit  of  discretion  in  regard  to  the 
amount  that  he  passes  on  for  the  speaking  man  to 
say. 


54  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

After  all,  she  was  Jack's  mother;  and  when  she 
asked  me  to  promise  that  I  would  not  in  any  way 
try  to  influence  him  I  promised  to  try,  and  she  went 
tottering  away  on  her  foolish  heels. 

As  I  tapped,  the  childhood  and  the  youth  of  this 
boy  passed  before  me;  this  mother  had  evidently 
done  for  him  all  that  she  knew  how  to  do.  I  could 
see  that  she  had  brought  him  up  in  accordance  with 
the  latest  thing  in  germ- theory;  the  stages  of  his 
sterilized  babyhood  passed  before  me,  bearing  wit- 
ness to  her  vigilance.  What  grim  irony  that  this 
over-guarded  generation  should  be  flung  into  the 
filth  and  stench  and  horror  of  the  trenches!  Will 
it  there  recover  some  of  the  healthy  unconsciousness 
in  regard  to  physical  matter  that  has  been  lost  dur- 
ing many  years? 

But  alas,  for  American  motherhood  without  real 
vision!  The  sole  definite  teaching  he  had  ever  re- 
ceived had  been  about  his  body.  Born  in  an  age  of 
negation,  of  half  acceptances,  the  only  positive  asser- 
tions being  those  of  science,  —  he  had  been  trained 
by  his  mother,  who  had  doubtless  kept  pace  with 
advancing  thought  through  digests  in  popular  maga- 
zines, not  to  believe  anything  very  hard,  but  to 
keep  the  shell,  the  outward  conformity,  lest,  after 
all,  something  in  the  old  faith  should  prove  true. 
Not  that  one  mourns  the  lack  of  dogmatic  theologi- 
cal teaching  for  the  young;  one  mourns  the  lack  of 
affirmation  of  the  reality  of  things  divine.  How 
shall  an  age  spiritually  trimming  bring  forth  young 
with  that  deeper  insight  which  is  the  essential  con- 
dition of  real  progress? 

I  felt  much  more  potential  seriousness  in  Jack 
than  the  transitional  teaching,  the  external  educa- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  55 

tion  of  his  generation  has  ever  brought  out;  there 
are  deeps  here  which  his  mother  has  never  fathomed. 

What  were  the  boy's  intellectual  and  spiritual  re- 
lations with  his  father,  I  wondered?  I  did  not  know, 
but  I  the  0Iit  that  I  could  surmise  with  some  con- 
viction. 

His  father  is  proprietor  of  Sands'  Emporium; 
nothing  hi  life  seems  to  him  so  important  as  that 
Jack  should  carry  on  this  business  here  and  in  other 
towns.  I  have  seen  him  sitting  in  church,  his  face 
a  noncommittal  mask,  like  that  on  many  an  Ameri- 
can citizen;  I  have  seen  him  walking  the  floor  of 
his  shop,  among  the  wares,  silks,  linens,  and  hose, 
with  his  soul  in  his  eyes. 

"My  soul  dwelleth  among  the  ribbons  of  the  bar- 
gain counter." 

Kingdoms  may  fall;  Belgian  women  suffer  rape; 
children  be  mutilated ;  the  shackles  that  the  German 
people  wear  come  nearer  our  wrists,  but  it  does  not 
trouble  this  man,  so  long  as  Sands'  Emporium  goes 
on  as  usual,  with  its  china  department,  its  dry-goods 
department,  its  department  for  kitchen  wares. 

These  parents  between  them,  despite  a  hard- 
working ancestry,  despite  the  fact  that  the  father 
toils  early  and  late,  have  brought  up  this  stalwart 
youth  like  the  lily  of  the  field  that  neither  toils  nor 
spins.  Duty,  service,  work  for  home  or  for  country, 
none  of  these  considerations  have  ever  been  im- 
pressed upon  him. 

There  he  stands,  with  a  radiance  of  youth  and  of 
health  about  him,  representing  unhurt  young 
America.  With  the  lowering  cloud  above  us  growing 
darker  and  darker,  what  will  he  become? 


VIII 

July  12. 

I  gave  my  left  thumb  a  bad  prick  to-day,  so  bad 
that  I  had  to  make  a  leather  hood  for  it  out  of  one 
of  my  last  pair  of  gloves. 

I  cannot  claim  that  I  am  a  good  cobbler;  an 
efficiency  expert  would  undoubtedly  condemn  both 
many  of  my  stitches  and  the  time  it  takes  me  to 
make  them.  But,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  most  efficient 
who  have  gone  most  wrong  in  our  day,  I  take  heart 
of  courage.  The  final  balancing  of  things,  the  sum- 
ming up  in  the  Great  Ledger  —  which  will  correct 
the  errors  hi  mine  —  is  a  more  delicate  process  than 
our  best  thinkers  have  discovered,  and  many  of 
those  who  have  reckoned  most  clearly  have  reckoned 
most  wrong.  Working  in  my  inefficient  way  I  have 
time  to  think  about  the  question  as  to  when  the 
initial  mistake  was  made  by  those  supermen  who 
have  achieved  everything  except  the  one  thing 
needful.  They  would  have  gained  more  had  they 
achieved  less,  had  they  spent  their  mental  energy 
in  trying  to  think  out  the  right  of  things. 

The  Eternal  Balance  will  not  be  in  favor  of 
mechanical  expertness,  of  skill  with  mere  things. 

July  14. 

Still  Jack  comes  to  sit  on  my  doorstep  and  talk 
with  me  as  I  take  my  stitches  or  drive  my  pegs. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  57 

Keeping  my  promise  to  his  mother,  I  have  ceased 
to  speak  of  the  world  crisis;  he  watches  me,  quizzi- 
cally, as  he  now  and  then  introduces  the  subject 
himself.  My  silence  seems  to  rouse  in  him  an  im- 
mense curiosity,  and  from  the  questions  that  he  asks 
me  I  can  see  that  he  is  making  swift  progress  in 
reaching  some  understanding  of  the  present  pre- 
dicament of  the  human  race.  Perhaps  I  am  be- 
ginning to  rely  too  much  on  his  companionship;  I 
have  found  myself,  in  these  last  days,  watching  for 
his  footsteps,  which  I  can  detect  far  down  the  street, 
—  and  a  bit  impatient  at  the  passing  footsteps  that 
are  not  Jack's. 

Meanwhile,  I  keep  steadily  at  work.  By  day  I 
keep  my  mind  busy  with  my  task,  but  my  nights 
are  full  of  troubled  questioning.  At  home  I  find 
each  night  my  candle ;  my  window  open  to  the  leafy 
branches  beyond  which  lies  the  sea;  white  walls, 
relieved  by  the  many-colored  patchwork  quilt  upon 
my  waiting  bed,  and  my  quiet.  The  cool  night  air 
with  its  sea  wind  on  my  face,  and  sleep,  —  why 
should  I  have  these  things  when  the  noisome  horror 
of  the  trenches  is  the  lot  of  so  many  of  my  kind?  I 
walk  softly,  ashamed  of  my  manhood,  and  yet  my 
years  forbid  that  I  should  go. 

How  far  have  we  gone  toward  realization  of  the 
nature  of  this  crisis?  To  what  extent  is  America  in 
her  inmost  soul  sharing  in  this  awful  struggle?  I 
watch,  thinking  that  the  signs  of  a  great  awakening 
increase;  and  then,  all  seem  to  have  dropped  back 
into  the  old  indifference,  the  old  selfishness,  in  spite 
of  the  increasing  menace  to  civilization  itself,  in  spite 
of  the  long  series  of  disasters  from  the  Dardanelles 
to  Fort  Vaux,  in  which  our  cause  seems  losing 


58  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

ground.  Here  we  have  food  and  drink,  men  seem 
to  say,  and  safety,  for  the  sea  is  wide.  Why  trouble? 

And  I  cover  my  face  with  my  hands,  in  shame  for 
my  kind.  What  children  are  we  of  those  who  dared 
all  for  liberty  if  we  can  stand  aside  and  fail  to  help 
in  the  struggle  of  millions  of  men  for  liberty  akin 
to  that  which  we  have  inherited,  not  ourselves 
achieved? 

My  thought  comes  always  back  to  Jack ;  had  I  but 
this  boy's  years!  Perhaps  this  is  why  his  face 
haunts  me :  I  envy  him  his  chance. 

In  the  long  night  hours  I  have  much  time,  too 
much,  for  speculation.  We  are  quivering  nowadays 
with  a  sense  of  great  change.  Are  we  at  the  end  of 
a  civilization,  dying  as  Rome  died,  or  are  we  at  the 
beginning  of  a  new  and  better  era? 

How  many  times  in  the  waxing  and  waning  of 
kingdoms  and  of  empires  have  people  asked  them- 
selves this  question?  Only  the  years  can  tell.  Cer- 
tain it  is,  there  is  a  stir  and  stress,  a  rush  of  deep 
currents  of  life,  for  those  who  have  souls  to  be  aware, 
such  as  were  not  known  in  my  days  of  youth  or  of 
early  middle  age. 

As  I  find  myself  yielding  to  these  insistent 
thoughts,  as  to  whether  this  is  indeed  the  end  of 
civilization,  a  passionate  denial  comes  in  the  thought 
of  Jack.  It  is  for  us  to  make  such  as  these  aware 
of  their  unexampled  opportunity;  for  such  as  these 
to  carry  out  our  highest  hopes  and  dreams. 

It  is  impossible  to  think  of  national  or  interna- 
tional decadence  in  the  face  of  such  young  eyes  as 
his.  Whenever  he  is  here,  I  feel  that  this  is  not 
the  collapse  of  a  civilization,  but  the  beginning  of 
a  new  era. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  59 

July  15. 

Clear  and  sunshiny  summer  weather,  with 
the  fragrance  of  new-cut  hay  abroad,  mingled  with 
that  of  roses  and  many  blossoming  things. 

This  afternoon  an  event  occurred.  Looking  up 
for  a  minute  as  I  was  putting  a  patch  on  the  post- 
master's shoe,  I  noticed  a  span  of  high-bred  horses 
stepping  down  the  village  street,  driven  by  a  young 
girl.  Many  a  team  have  I  seen  in  Mataquoit  but 
never  a  team  like  this;  as  I  was  admiring  both  the 
pair  and  the  way  in  which  the  driver  held  the  reins, 
a  motor-cycle  flashed  sputtering  past.  There  was 
a  sudden  plunging,  the  smart  trap  swerved  peril- 
ously, and  I  should  have  been  alarmed  if  I  had  not 
recognized  the  superb  horsemanship  with  which  the 
crisis  was  met.  I  was  turning  to  my  work  again, 
when  I  saw  that  the  team  was  stopped,  a  groom 
standing  at  their  heads.  The  slender  driver  sprang 
to  the  ground ;  there  was  a  swift  examination  of  the 
harness ;  then  I  saw  that  she  was  coming  toward  my 
shop. 

I  put  down  my  needle  and  watched  her;  she 
looked  incredibly  young  and  tensely  alive,  with  all 
the  strength  of  her  young  mind  and  soul  and  body 
still  to  spend.  There  was  a  spring  in  her  walk  that 
I  have  seldom  seen  in  that  of  young  girls,  a  sug- 
gestion of  repressed  energy,  a  reserve  of  force.  She 
wore,  I  fancy,  the  simplest  and  the  costliest  white 
dress  in  Mataquoit,  or  in  the  whole  State  of 
Maine.  It  was  a  fresh,  salt-sea  day,  and  she  seemed 
to  bring  with  her  the  tang  of  the  bracing  sea  air, 
with  the  breath  of  summer  roses. 

There  was  something  so  compelling  in  the  swift 
white  figure  that  I  held  my  breath,  for  I  had  been 


60  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

thinking  half  consciously,  as  I  put  in  my  stitches, 
of  the  war  and  its  horrors,  of  shells  crashing  in  the 
trenches,  and  the  outcries  of  wounded  men.  As  she 
came,  straight,  slim,  and  white,  with  a  half-boyish 
look,  some  thought  of  the  herald  angels  flitted 
through  my  mind,  and  I  half  expected  to  hear  her 
say 

"Peace  on  Earth." 

Instead  she  asked  me  to  mend  a  strap ;  one  of  the 
lines  had  broken. 

She  watched  my  hands  intently  as  I  worked;  it 
vexed  me  to  have  her  see  how  awkward  I  was  in  the 
management  of  my  needle,  and  I  jabbed  my  finger 
almost  to  the  bone,  but  made  no  outcry.  There 
was  a  little  flicker  of  sympathy  in  her  gray  eyes,  for 
she  saw  and  understood. 

Straps  ought  not  to  break  in  that  fashion,  she 
observed. 

I  suggested  that  the  war  was  already  making  a 
difference  in  the  quality  of  things  one  could  get. 

"It's  a  horrid  war,"  she  said  idly,  looking  out 
toward  the  street. 

I  had  not  supposed  that  any  human  being,  how- 
ever young,  could  live  through  this  tragic  time  and 
be  so  untouched  by  it.  I  hardly  know  what  I  said 
to  her,  as  I  sped  on  with  my  work;  doubtless  it  was 
unbecoming  for  one  performing  my  humble  task  to 
venture  at  all.  But  I  made  an  attempt  to  make 
her  realize  more  deeply  the  significance  of  these  days, 
pouring  out  what  was  in  my  mind  before  she  came. 
The  herald  angels  could  not  know  the  high  import 
of  their  message  unless  they  knew  something  of  the 
hell  of  war. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  61 

A  troubled  look  came  into  her  eyes,  and  they 
seemed  a  deeper  gray;  I  felt  sure  as  I  watched  that 
no  idea  was  too  deep  for  the  clear  depths  of  them. 
It  was  a  sensitive  face,  I  saw;  the  hurt  that  my 
words  had  brought  quivered  in  the  delicate  lines  of 
the  lips. 

She  said  that  her  father  did  not  like  to  have  her 
read  about  the  war,  and  she  knew  little  concerning 
it.  I  answered  nothing,  but  shook  my  head  as  I 
gave  her  back  the  bit  of  harness,  wondering  who  her 
short-sighted  and  foolish  father  might  be.  To  think 
of  living  through  earth's  hour  of  supreme  trial  and 
not  even  trying  to  understand! 

If  I  disapproved  of  her  state  of  mind,  I  distinctly 
approved  of  her  feet.  Doubtless  I  am  judging 
people  too  much  by  their  shoes,  perhaps  because  my 
craft  is  new.  Hers  looked  a  rather  perfect  indication 
of  character,  —  dainty,  strong,  of  finest  material, 
with  no  suggestion  of  absurdly  pointed  toe,  or  ab- 
surdly high  heel.  I  will  not  say  that  they  had  flat 
heels  or  unnecessarily  broad  toes,  for  they  had  not; 
they  were  just  right. 

Any  person  coming  down  the  street,  with  his  eyes 
fixed  meditatively  on  the  pavement  so  that  he  hap- 
pened to  see  the  shoes,  would  have  said,  even  with- 
out a  glance  at  the  wearer:  "Here  comes  a 
gentlewoman." 

July  18. 

My  present  life  brings  me  at  times  a  rare  content. 
When  it  is  dusk  outside  and  duskier  inside,  a  place 
of  queer  shadows,  I  sit  on  my  bench  at  the  side 
of  my  doorway  and  smoke  my  pipe,  with  Tim  at 
my  feet.  The  smell  of  the  sea  is  pleasant  at  this 


62  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

hour;  old-fashioned  lemon  lilacs  grow  in  a  tangle  at 
the  corner  of  my  shop.  Here  I  listen  to  the  foot- 
steps of  passing  people,  young  footsteps  and  old. 
Laughter  comes,  the  shrill  shout  of  laughter  of  the 
young,  the  cackle  of  the  old.  Sometimes  I  hear  the 
murmur  of  the  ocean ;  always,  even  when  it  is  quiet, 
I  am  aware  of  its  nearness,  with  its  silence  envelop- 
ing all  human  voices 

I  have  a  new  sense  of  sharing;  now  and  then  some 
one  stops,  or  calls  out  to  me  as  he  is  passing.  Per- 
haps he  asks  me  if  his  boots  are  done,  or  asks  me 
how  I  like  the  weather,  an  endless  source  of  pleas- 
antry in  Mataquoit.  Or  it  may  be  that  he  jeers  at 
my  shop,  inquiring  if  I  have  not  a  corner  to  rent; 
it  is  indeed  small.  Sometimes  a  child  comes,  — 
almost  to  my  knee;  sometimes,  when  Tim  is  not 
there,  a  kitten,  or  a  wise  old  disillusioned  cat. 

Swallows  circle  overhead,  flying  low  and  wide; 
robin  and  song  sparrow  light  on  my  chimney;  even 
the  clouds  seem  more  friendly,  now  that  I  have  a 
roof  tree;  the  sea  is  all  but  a  caller  at  my  doorway. 

Neighbors;  a  job;  a  threshold  of  my  own;  an 
honest  wage,  —  four  dollars  and  sixteen  cents  for 
this  week's  work;  a  place  among  men:  what  more 
could  one  ask? 

Sometimes  I  stay  late,  until  Mrs.  Frayne  sends 
her  little  daughter  to  tell  me  to  come  home.  I  like 
being  looked  after;  I  am  not  used  to  personal  care. 

In  spite  of  all  my  failures  there  is  with  me  a 
subtler  sense  of  fibers  being  more  closely  knit,  bind- 
ing man  to  man ;  of  deeper  unity ;  of  finer  and  more 
sympathetic  understanding. 

And  the  deepest  aspect  of  all  this  deepening  life 
comes  in  my  thought  of  Jack.  I  confess  myself 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  63 

rather  at  a  loss  to  understand  the  depth  of  my 
feeling  for  him. 

It  began  in  a  passionate  desire  to  be  of  service, 
to  open  the  ways  of  life  for  him.  Something  in  me 
is  father  to  something  in  him,  though  physical  fact 
contradicts  this;  it  is  a  purely  spiritual  fatherhood, 
centering  in  a  desire  to  help  make  the  world  a  fit 
place  for  him.  All  things  must  be  made  fair  and 
new;  I  would  reshape  earth  for  his  destiny;  it  is  an 
impulse  such  as  God  must  have  had  when  he  created 
Adam  in  the  morning  of  the  world. 

Such  love  seems  not  unjustified;  I  know  that, 
though  he  has  parents,  he  is  spiritually  an  orphan. 

Yet  I  find  myself  surprised,  disturbed  by  the  grow- 
ing warmth  of  my  interest;  distressed  by  the  lack 
I  feel  on  the  days  when  he  does  not  come.  Such 
freshness,  zest,  youth  he  brings  to  my  shop ;  so  much 
potential  power! 

Then  I  rebuke  myself,  finding  a  flaw  in  my  atti- 
tude toward  him.  It  is  not  for  me  to  create  for  him, 
but  to  try  to  create  in  him;  not  for  me  to  reshape 
the  world  for  him,  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire,  but 
to  help  make  him  ready  to  reshape  it;  to  have  this 
boy's  soul  grow  equal  to  his  flawless  body. 

The  measure  of  my  drawing  near  my  kind  is  the 
measure  of  a  deepening  sense  of  the  world  agony 
and  of  our  intolerable  position  in  not  trying  to  help. 
It  is  incredible;  I  sit  at  my  bench  and  draw  my 
needle  in  and  out ;  the  minister  strolls  happily  down 
the  street;  the  expressman  whistles  as  he  passes, — 
and  over  there,  women  in  anguish,  children  cruci- 
fied! A  world  of  agony,  of  mangled  men  and  out- 
raged women  and  crucified  babies,  —  and  Mataquoit 
strolls  up  and  down  in  the  sunshine,  smelling  of  its 
lilies  and  its  roses. 


IX 


July  20. 

It  was  certainly  through  no  fault  of  mine  that 
those  two  young  creatures  encountered  each  other 
this  afternoon.  Jack  was  somewhat  hidden  in  a 
corner,  behind  my  high  machine  for  stitching  soles ; 
he  was  prying  about,  through  a  box  filled  with  bits 
of  waste  leather,  for  more  Greek  literature,  or,  as 
he  put  it,  "for  more  incriminating  highbrow  evi- 
dence" against  me.  My  lady  of  the  white  gown  and 
the  broken  rein  did  not  see  him  at  all  when  she 
came  in.  As  before  when  she  was  there,  though  it 
did  not  ordinarily  trouble  me,  I  was  conscious  of  the 
junk  about  the  place,  the  litter  of  boot  lasts  and 
tools,  the  disarray  of  the  tray  that  held  needles  and 
tacks  and  pegs.  My  guest,  however,  did  not  appear 
to  notice  any  of  this;  she  stood  with  her  eyes  fixed 
upon  me,  serene,  simple,  lovely  in  line  as  a  maiden 
in  a  Greek  relief  on  a  day  when  no  wind  was  blow- 
ing; those  white  shoes  should  have  been  sandals. 

She  had  come,  she  said,  with  a  fine  directness  and 
no  suggestion  of  an  excuse  for  entering  my  shop,  to 
ask  if  I  could  give  her  the  names  of  books  and 
articles  that  would  enable  her  to  understand  the 
present  crisis  and  the  history  of  the  war  during  the 
two  years  past. 

I  could  and  did.  It  took  me  twenty-seven  minutes 
to  say  what  I  had  to  say;  my  visitor  took  notes  on 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  65 

a  small  tablet  which  she  carried  in  a  gold-meshed 


Her  state  of  mind  surprised  and  hurt  me;  I  had 
not  supposed  that  any  human  being  could  be  so 
ignorant  of  the  facts,  of  the  profoundly  tragic  nature 
of  the  struggle. 

She  seemed  to  have  a  dim  feeling,  as  in  regard  to 
the  slums,  that  unpleasant  people  were  doing  un- 
pleasant things  from  motives  wholly  inexplicable  to 
any  rational  human  being.  Though  her  exquisite, 
cloistered  girlhood  was  wholly  charming,  her  ig- 
norance made  me  wonder  if  the  fashionable  terms 
paid  by  wealthy  American  parents  at  exclusive 
finishing  schools  to  keep  their  daughters  from  know- 
ing anything  were  not  too  high.  Are  they  satisfied 
with  the  result,  I  wonder? 

But  to-day,  how  can  one  be  young  and  not  know? 
Do  they  not  realize,  they  who  walk  on  the  edge  of 
the  precipice,  that  the  very  ground  is  giving  way 
under  their  feet? 

All  this  time  I  glanced  but  once  in  Jack's  direc- 
tion ;  he  was  sitting  perfectly  quiet  in  the  corner  on 
the  large  section  of  a  tree-trunk  that  my  predecessor 
had  evidently  regarded  as  furniture.  There  was  a 
look  of  awed  delight  upon  his  sunburned  face;  the 
girl's  eyes  followed  mine  but  did  not  linger.  She 
was  too  intent  upon  what  I  was  saying  to  be  con- 
scious of  his  presence. 

As  she  took  notes,  I  observed  that  Jack  also  was 
jotting  down  the  information,  evidently  upon  the 
back  of  an  old  envelope;  how  many  times  had  I 
suggested  these  things  to  him,  but  in  vain ! 

There  was  no  reason  whatever  why,  as  I  watched 
this  young  girl  standing  there,  tall,  erect,  with  brown 


66  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

hair  done  in  simple  style  under  her  broad  white  hat, 
—  there  is  no  reason  why  my  heart  should  have 
skipped  a  beat.  My  appreciation  of  the  beautiful 
is  always  calm,  dispassionate,  impersonal. 

I  have  been  wondering  why  there  seemed  a  certain 
splendor,  a  radiance  about  her  as  she  stood  there. 
Young  girls  in  white  are  no  novelty  to  me.  That 
fine  definiteness  of  outline,  that  clean  swiftness  and 
grace  of  motion  as  she  went,  could  not  account  for 
the  peculiar  impression. 

I  did  not  understand  until  I  saw  Jack's  face.  He 
was  watching,  and  unconsciously  I  saw  with  his 
eyes. 

It  was  not  until  she  was  well  down  the  street  that 
I  saw  she  had  left  her  little  bag,  having  dropped  it 
on  my  bench  when  she  took  out  her  tablet.  Jack's 
eyes  followed  mine,  and  he  pounced  upon  it.  A 
minute  after  he  was  sprinting  down  the  street;  he 
is,  I  believe,  the  champion  runner  of  his  class.  He 
came  back  presently,  silent,  breathless,  a  starry 
shining  in  his  eyes. 

"Wh-ew!"  said  Jack. 

But  I  knew  that  he  meant  what  Homer  meant 
when  he  sang  of  Helen,  and  the  Greek  sculptor 
meant  when  he  was  trying  to  speak  in  marble  of 
the  glory  of  Diana. 

"Who  is  she?"  asked  the  boy. 

"I've  no  idea,"  I  told  him,  "unless  she  is  the 
daughter  of  your  local  millionaire." 

"He  has  two  daughters,  I  believe,"  said  Jack 
thoughtfully,  "but  I  have  never  seen  them.  We  are 
new  here,  you  know." 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  67 

July  23. 

It  has  its  troublesome  moments,  but  I  am  free  to 
say  that  I  enjoy  my  cobbling.  Tap,  tap,  and  the 
air  comes  in  freshly  through  my  window,  sometimes 
full  of  the  fragrance  of  roses  from  old  Mrs.  Blake's 
bush  around  the  corner;  sometimes  of  the  breath  of 
lemon  lilies  that  grow  not  far  away;  sometimes  of 
the  fresh  earth  with  rain  falling  on  it ;  sometimes  of 
the  sting  of  the  sea. 

I  like  the  smell  of  leather,  of  the  shoemaker's  wax, 
of  the  sunshine  hot  on  the  shingles. 

I  am  doing  something.  The  morning  hours  have 
a  long  sweetness  of  toil;  I  draw  my  waxed  thread 
in  and  out,  pulling  it  tightly,  making  my  stitches 
firm.  I  can  see  with  my  eyes  what  my  hands  have 
done. 

It  helps  me  to  forget,  at  times,  the  roar  of  artillery, 
the  flaming  gas,  the  mud  and  stench  of  the  trenches, 
the  cries  of  captured  women,  all  the  suffering  of  the 
war,  of  which  I  am,  perforce,  the  wretched  spec- 
tator, the  mere  passive  observer.  It  helps  me  to 
forget,  at  moments  when  I  sadly  need  it,  those  other 
problems  of  rule  and  government  in  regard  to  which 
I  am  trying  to  do  some  constructive  thinking;  I  am 
reading  widely,  along  the  line  of  new  political  creeds, 
socialistic  and  other,  to  see  whether  any  man  or 
group  of  men  has  a  finer  solution  of  the  human  prob- 
lem to  offer  than  that  embodied  in  our  Constitution. 
In  the  deeper  struggle  underlying  this  clash  of  war, 
our  democratic  beliefs,  our  democratic  institutions 
are  at  stake.  All  my  power  of  thought  and  all  my 
observation  are  bent  toward  making  a  dispassionate 
estimate  of  their  worth  to-day. 

In  all  this  swirl  of  thought  my  cobbler's  bench  is 


68  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

something  solid,  tangible.  I  can  not,  it  is  true,  see 
from  it  over  the  horizon;  I  can  not  see  the  end  or 
the  full  meaning  of  this  great  world  war,  still  less 
of  the  far-reaching  struggle  that  will  follow;  daily 
intercourse  with  these  people  has  not,  as  yet,  re- 
vealed to  me  the  ultimate  secrets  of  harmonious 
government.  But  my  bench  is  real,  and  it  is  there ; 
there  was  nothing  so  solid  in  that  doctrinaire  world 
from  which  I  came.  There  were  only  theories,  dis- 
cussions, heated  talk;  solution  of  the  deepest  prac- 
tical problems  of  the  country  by  people  who  had 
never  done  a  practical  thing  in  their  lives. 

Now,  when  my  mind  is  puzzled  beyond  the  power 
of  human  endurance,  I  remember  that  I  can  still 
make  stitches,  and  I  come  back  to  my  bench. 

Which  needle  shall  I  use? 

July  25. 

Sweet  peas  grow  larger  and  more  beautiful  near 
the  shore  than  anywhere  else.  Next  year  I  must 
have  a  row  of  my  own,  under  my  shop  window. 

July  26. 

I  do  not  know  how  Jack  managed  it,  for  I  did  not 
ask  him,  but  he  has  evidently  contrived  to  get  him- 
self properly  introduced  to  my  lady  of  the  high- 
stepping  horses  and  the  questioning  gray  eyes. 
Certainly  I  did  not  perform  the  ceremony  on  the 
day  when  they  happened  to  be  in  my  shop  at  the 
same  time;  of  the  convenances  as  they  touch  one 
of  my  humble  calling  I  am  well  aware.  But  I  saw 
them  greeting  each  other  on  the  street  to-day  as  if 
they  were  old  friends. 

It  was  my  turn  to  ask  who  she  is.    Jack  informed 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  69 

me  that  my  surmise  was  correct ;  she  is  Miss  Katha- 
rine Brown,  but  he  seemed  disinclined  to  say  any- 
thing more  about  her. 

Jack  is  so  much  with  me  during  these  days  that 
I  have  a  feeling  as  of  something  wrong  when  he  is 
away  from  me,  a  feeling  of  his  belonging  to  me.  I 
am  sorry  that  I  did  not  know  him  when  he  was  six; 
when  he  was  ten,  fourteen;  I  have,  idly,  I  suppose, 
spent  much  time  pondering  the  boy  he  was.  A 
strong  affection  has  grown  up  between  us,  though 
we  do  not  speak  of  it. 

In  accordance  with  his  mother's  request  I  am  still 
silent  in  regard  to  the  war;  I  do  not  even  express 
to  him  my  own  feeling  as  to  our  great  duty  undone 
here.  Nor  am  I  saying  much  about  those  deeper 
problems  that  I  am  confronting;  the  duties  of  a 
citizen  in  a  free  country  in  the  matter  of  constantly 
endeavoring  by  word  and  deed  to  make  his  country 
still  more  free.  Yet  I  have  an  idea  that  it  was  when 
I  stopped  talking  with  Jack  about  these  things  that 
my  influence  began  to  tell.  Really,  the  old  oracles 
showed  profound  knowledge  of  the  way  in  which  to 
play  upon  human  nature,  either  by  keeping  still,  or 
by  expressing  themselves  in  unintelligible  terms! 
Perhaps  I  can  best  further  my  cause  by  silence; 
nobody  had  ever  had  quite  so  much  reputation  for 
wisdom  as  the  Sphinx. 

Jack  invited  me  to-day  to  go  out  with  him  in  his 
runabout,  and,  as  my  thumb  is  still  troubling  me, 
because  of  that  unfortunate  prick  with  the  awl,  I 
shut  my  shop  door  and  went.  I  fancy  that  he 
wanted,  in  his  young  chivalry,  to  be  seen  in  public 
with  me,  because  of  unkind  suspicions  that  are  afloat 
concerning  my  previous  career. 


70  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

We  had  a  fine  long  drive  by  the  sea,  and  my  al- 
most oppressive  sense  of  responsibility  in  regard  to 
my  new  citizenship  lifted.  We  chattered  like  two 
boys. 

On  our  way  home  we  passed  the  Brown  estate, 
Round  Towers,  a  huge  and  rocky  pile,  where  a 
medieval  baron  might  defend  himself  for  weeks 
against  a  rival.  With  the  great  main  house,  the  vast 
servants'  quarters,  the  spreading  greenhouses,  and 
the  encompassing  grounds,  it  out-Englished  the 
English,  out-Frenched  the  French,  out-Italianated 
the  Italians.  All  history  was  in  that  jumble  of  house 
architecture  and  landscape  architecture,  —  not  for- 
getting Greece  and  Babylon. 

I  saw  Miss  Brown,  going  out  to  ride  on  a  fine 
Kentucky  mare,  with  a  grooin  in  attendance,  and 
then  I  caught  a  glimpse  r*  Jack's  face.  So  that  is 
what  has  happened!  My  first  feeling  was  one  of 
dismay,  for  it  seemed  improbable  that  recognition 
could  be  given  by  this  prince's  domain  to  Sands' 
Emporium,  or  anybody  connected  therewith. 

As  the  girl  rode  away,  between  the  massive  stone 
piles  of  the  entrance,  I  could  not  help  feeling  that 
she  did  not  belong  to  this  place.  It  was  too  new, 
too  ostentatious,  not  in  good  enough  taste  for  her. 
She  looks  a  thoroughbred,  and  as  if  she  ought  to  be 
in  some  plain,  fine,  ancestral  home,  suggesting  gen- 
erations of  the  best  and  choicest  American  life.  I 
wondered  what  had  made  her  so  different  in  look 
and  manner  from  all  that  surrounded  her,  and  de- 
cided that  it  was  perhaps  the  finishing  school, 
though  this  explanation  did  not  seem  wholly  satis- 
factory. 


71 

July  27. 

My  shop  is  in  more  disorder  than  ever,  one  side 
having  been  thrown  open  for  the  building  of  a 
chimney  and  an  open  fireplace.  Here  is  a  call  back 
to  practical  reality  from  my  romancing  in  regard  to 
Miss  Katharine  Brown  and  Jack. 

There  are  plenty  of  other  calls,  for,  in  and  out  of 
Mataquoit,  in  and  out  of  my  range  of  vision,  drift 
people  of  many  types  who  show  me  what  freedom 
has  done  for  her  sons  and  daughters,  what  freedom 
has  not  done. 

It  is  the  daughters  of  freedom  who  trouble  me 
most  keenly.  A  woman  drove  in  from  the  country 
to-day  to  ask  if  I  could  mend  the  yawning  holes  in 
a  pair  of  rubbers,  an  impossible  task.  Thin  as  a 
broken  reed,  with  scrawny  neck  and  arms,  face,  eyes, 
hair  all  the  faded  brown  of  dried  grass,  she  went 
dejectedly  back  to  her  lean  horse  and  skeleton 
wagon.  The  little  girl,  whose  pipestem  legs  dangled 
from  the  wagon  seat,  sat  awaiting  a  destiny  akin  to 
her  mother's.  I  watched  them  as  they  went — > 
woman,  child,  and  horse  —  back  to  the  sorrows  of 
their  several  kinds. 

Loneliness ;  an  utter  isolation ;  one  could  not  mis- 
take in  the  woman's  face  the  haunted  look  of  those 
who  do  not  share  their  thoughts.  What  democracy 
gone  wrong  shows  in  the  lives  of  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  American  women!  Marooned  in  iso- 
lated houses,  with  only  fields  and  woods  stretching 
about  them,  they  miss  the  warm,  human,  half-dis- 
putatious life  of  Italian  country  folk;  they  have 
small  chance  for  neighborly  intercourse,  still  less  for 
civic  duties  and  responsibilities.  In  that  life  of  al- 
most unbroken  silences,  poverty  with  all  its  hard- 


72  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

ships  is  taken  for  granted  as  are  sun  and  wind  and 
lightning.  Why  should  a  woman  like  this,  who  has 
obviously  done  her  part  in  giving  a  child  to  the 
republic,  have  no  feeling  of  a  part  to  play  in  its  large 
life  and  no  strength  to  play  it? 

The  many  investigators  who  are  studying  the 
problems  of  the  immigrant  population  with  a  view 
to  bettering  conditions  have  apparently  given  little 
thought  to  these  victims  of  our  alleged  civilization. 

We  cry  out  against  the  war-outraged  women  of 
Francs  and  Belgium;  who  will  cry  into  our  ears 
shame  upon  us  for  the  outraged  souls  of  thousands 
of  American  women,  mostly  farmers'  wives,  whose 
lives  are  one  long,  grinding  monotony  of  unremitting 
toil,  who  face  life,  childbirth,  child-rearing,  death  in 
loneliness  under  an  unanswering  sky? 

Can  a  democracy  which  sanctions  such  conditions 
as  bring  Miss  Katharine  Brown  to  a  pass  where  she 
is  all  but  smothered  with  luxury,  and  which  leaves 
this  other  woman  to  her  rag  of  calico,  her  fate  of 
baking  sun  and  gnawing  cold,  be  indeed  a  true 
democracy?  Are  such  cruel  contrasts  indeed  the 
people's  will?  What  is  wrong  with  our  system? 
Have  we  lost  our  way? 

Verily,  my  mind  is  filled  with  questions,  even  as 
my  shop  is  filled  with  boots,  shoes,  and  scraps  of 
leather.  With  each  person  who  unlatches  my  door 
some  new  problem  enters ;  there  are  moments  when 
I  wish  that  my  customers  would  stay  away. 


July  28. 

Even  before  any  words  were  uttered  I  knew  that 
upon  my  threshold  stood  a  very  angry  man.  No  such 
person  of  importance  had  stood  there  before  in  my 
day.  He  was  tall,  gray-haired  and  gray-bearded, 
and  over-correctly  costumed  in  all  that  most  ex- 
clusive tailordom  could  devise  for  an  elderly  gentle- 
man. I  wondered  why  he  looked  oddly  familiar; 
perhaps  it  was  only  his  prosperous  type. 

His  speech  was  not  as  elegant  as  his  attire ;  there 
was  a  brusque  directness  about  it  that  betokened 
the  successful  man's  power  to  come  to  the  point  at 
once.  He  had  heard  that  I  was  bringing  influence  to 
bear  upon  his  daughter;  what  did  I  mean  by  it? 
What  had  I  been  giving  her  to  read? 

The  storm  of  wrath  was  at  full  height  when  he 
stopped,  open-mouthed,  staring. 

"You,  Masters?"  he  gasped.  "What  in  the  name 
of  the  living  Jupiter  are  you  doing  here?" 

It  was  Billions  Brown. 

"You  see,"  I  answered,  holding  up  a  child's  shoe 
on  which  I  was  working;  "cobbling." 

"But,  man,  what's  happened  to  you?  Have  you 
lost  your  money?" 

To  this  I  made  no  answer;  Billions  had  never 
been  noted  for  his  good  manners. 

Old  Billions  Brown;  I  knew  him  when  he  was 


74  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

nineteen,  at  college.  He  waited  on  table;  did 
gardening;  mowed  lawns.  He  had  pluck,  resource; 
brains,  also,  but  these  he  did  not  waste  in  college 
work.  He  did  not  need  to,  and  Billions  was  never 
one  to  make  any  unnecessary  expenditure  whatever. 
College  education  was  for  him  an  investment  that 
meant  ultimate  gain;  he  intended  to  get,  at  the 
lowest  terms  possible,  the  degree  of  a  university  with 
an  old  and  honored  name.  He  had  just  crawled 
through.  Luckily  for  him,  an  elective  system  made 
it  possible  for  him  to  graduate  on  a  negligible 
amount  of  work. 

I  had  never  heard  from  him  or  about  him  since 
those  days.  This  was  not  strange,  for  I  had  not 
known  him  well.  He  was  not  in  my  set;  we  had  not 
the  same  tastes  or  traditions.  The  fact  that  he  was 
working  his  way  through  had  nothing  to  do  with 
this;  I  had  for  bosom  friend  a  man  as  poor.  But 
Billions'  kind  of  game  was  not  my  kind  of  game. 

I  remember  Billions  at  college,  —  rough,  a  bit  un- 
kempt, and  scrawny,  sometimes  in  overalls,  garden- 
ing for  Prexy,  sometimes  in  ready-made  suit  in  class, 
hastily  trying  to  master  the  assignment  for  the  day, 
while  some  fellow  student  recited;  never  was  there 
any  one  who  could  make  a  few  scraps  of  information 
go  as  far  as  could  Billions.  Billions  was  making 
quarters  hand  over  hand;  scrupulously  honest,  of 
course.  Everything  he  touched  turned  to  silver. 
Already  the  stamp  of  success  was  upon  him;  you 
read  his  future  in  his  shrewd  and  shining  eyes;  in 
the  set  of  his  jaw;  in  his  eager,  unflagging  alertness. 
He  was  never  tired.  He  had  not  a  penny  except 
what  he  earned;  he  often,  I  think,  went  hungry, 
saving  for  the  days  to  come,  but  we  called  him 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  75 

Billions  Brown,  for  we  foresaw  the  future.  And 
apparently  we  had  foreseen  it  correctly;  I  smiled, 
realizing  how  nearly  our  jesting  prophecies  had 
come  true. 

"Well,  you  have  come  down  in  the  world,"  he 
was  saying. 

"I  am  not  so  sure  of  that,"  I  told  him,  but  I  let 
him  think  that  it  was  an  economic,  not  a  spiritual 
necessity  which  impelled  me,  for  the  latter  he  would 
never  understand.  I  could  almost  read  what  was 
going  on  in  his  mind;  there  was  sympathy  there, 
mingled  with  satisfaction.  He  had  thought  of  me 
doubtless  in  college  days  as  a  bit  of  a  snob,  as  I 
had  been.  He  had  thought  of  me  as  overweeningly 
proud  of  my  family,  as  I  had  been.  He  had  thought 
of  me  as  merely  "lit'ry,"  as  I  had  been.  But  what 
was  I  now? 

I  could  have  laughed  out  as  I  sat  there  with  the 
shoemaker's  wax  on  my  roughened  fingers,  for  I 
saw  Billions  falling  back  into  something  of  the  old 
attitude  of  being  a  bit  afraid  of  me. 

"But  to  come  back  to  your  daughter,"  I  suggested. 
His  face  grew  dark,  but  he  spoke  hesitatingly.  He 
had  been  told  that  his  daughter  had  been  coming  to 
my  shop;  that  she  had  been  seen  to  meet  young 
Sands  there. 

"A  shop,"  I  told  him  meekly,  "is  public  ground. 
I  can  not  turn  people  out,  so  long  as  they  are  well- 
behaved." 

He  snorted;  the  snort  of  the  successful  man. 

"The  young  are  active,"  I  suggested.  "Their 
shoes  will  wear  out." 

"My  daughter,"  he  thundered,  "has  no  need  to 
wear  a  pair  of  shoes  a  second  time,  if  she  does  not 


76  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

want  to.    She  could  throw  them  away  every  day; 
there  are  plenty  more  where  they  came  from." 

"Your  daughter,"  I  told  him,  "wouldn't  —  unless 
I  am  greatly  mistaken  in  her  —  while  so  many  go 
shoeless." 

"Shoeless!  Let  them  work,  then,  and  get  them- 
selves shoes.  I  began  with  nothing,  didn't  I?" 

"Billions,"  I  answered,  "whatever  you  began  with, 
it  looks  to  me  as  if  you  were  going  to  end  with  less 
than  nothing." 

"What  kind  of  ideas  have  you  been  putting  into 
my  girl's  head?"  he  demanded. 

"I  have  simply  been  telling  her  a  few  facts." 

We  talked  for  half  an  hour  and  shook  hands  at 
parting.  Tim  was  greatly  puzzled  during  this  inter- 
view; he  could  not  tell  whether  to  bark  or  to  wag 
his  tail.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  seen  him 
at  a  loss. 

» 
July  30. 

The  last  few  days  have  brought  me  a  realization 
that  I  must  turn  my  thought  resolutely  back  from 
certain  individuals  in  whom  I  find  myself  becoming 
personally  interested  to  the  larger  purpose  for  which 
I  came.  My  task  is  with  the  rank  and  file  of  my 
fellow  men,  not  with  my  friends  alone. 

There  is  much  chance  here  for  observation ;  under- 
neath all  question  and  answer  and  weather  comment 
a  difficult  problem  makes  itself  incessantly  felt :  how 
to  learn  to  reverence  human  nature  in  its  varied 
manifestations,  for  the  divinity  that  is  in  it.  Not 
its  culture ;  not  its  gifts ;  not  merely  those  who  have 
the  great  insights,  the  great  passions,  those  who 
make  the  great  achievements.  What  is  needed  is 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  77 

respect  for  any  human  soul,  if  not  in  its  actualities, 
in  its  possibilities,  the  hidden  greatness  that  is  there. 

With  philosopher  and  poet,  I  can  reverence  men 
when  I  sit  alone,  thinking ;  the  breath  of  the  sea,  the 
fragrance  of  my  pine  tree  mingle  in  my  finer  mood. 
But  when  my  shop  door  creaks,  and  my  neighbor 
enters,  —  my  fine  abstract  love  for  man  often  flies 
out  of  the  window.  It  is  difficult  to  reverence  cer- 
tain people  in  Mataquoit. 

Noah  Price,  the  grocer,  who  manipulates  the 
scales  a  bit  when  he  weighs  sugar,  and  gives  you 
light  weight. 

Widow  Frayne,  my  landlady,  who  sits  alert  at  her 
window,  looking  for  one  more  person  about  whom 
she  can  say  unkind  things. 

If  I  make  in  my  ledger  a  list  of  all  the  people  in 
Mataquoit  toward  whom  I  have  a  feeling  of  religious 
respect,  and,  in  another  column,  state  my  philo- 
sophic belief  in  the  essential  sacredness  of  the  human 
soul,  how  will  my  long  page  balance?  It  is  a 
troublesome  problem:  often  it  keeps  me  awake  till 
the  outgoing  tide  perhaps  puts  me  to  sleep.  My 
religion  has  been  reverence  for  certain  chosen  souls 
through  whom  I  have  known  the  divine. 

But  these  people 

Men  stand  with  bared  heads  in  the  presence  of 
the  dead,  —  of  whatsoever  lives;  we  do  not  ask 
then  what  a  man's  past  has  been.  Why  not  in 
presence  of  the  living? 

How  can  we  build  stable  governments,  resting 
upon  the  will  of  men,  unless  we  have,  man  to  man, 
a  deeper  insight  and  a  deeper  faith,  a  knowledge  of 
the  "common  soul?" 


78  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

July  31. 

It  is  a  great  sight  to  see  Billions  Brown  driving  in 
state  through  the  village  or  along  the  country  roads, 
whether  in  his  speeding  Mercedes,  with  the  French 
chauffeur,  or  with  his  highbred  horses  driven  by  his 
experienced  British  coachman.  He  has  no  outriders, 
though  it  seems  as  if  he  should  have ;  but  coachman 
and  footmen  are  properly  uniformed,  and  there  is 
something  of  medieval  state  about  his  coming  and 
going. 

Villagers  and  country  folk  are  greatly  impressed ; 
now  and  then  a  rural  nag  stands  on  his  hind  legs 
to  do  homage  to  the  lord  of  the  manor  in  his  swift 
car,  yet  I  fancy  that  Billions  does  not  get  full  satis- 
faction out  of  this  state  progress.  After  all,  the  oc- 
cupations of  the  medieval  lord  have  vanished ;  here 
is  no  hunting,  no  hawking,  no  fighting,  no  border 
foray,  no  dash  upon  a  castle  to  carry  off  —  Heaven 
forfend  —  a  bride. 

Only  the  habits  of  the  desk,  the  office,  the  re- 
finery ;  not  a  taste,  or  a  habit,  or  an  aptitude  to  carry 
into  the  sporting  world  of  idleness  into  which  his 
wealth  has  projected  him.  His  life  must  lack  those 
roots  from  which  all  things  that  make  life  worth 
while  grow. 

August  1. 

Though  I  still  read  much  regarding  the  war  I 
hardly  allow  myself  to  think  of  loss  and  gain  on  the 
battlefronts ;  my  fighting  line  is  elsewhere.  Yet,  as 
the  second  year  of  the  war  draws  to  a  close,  it  is 
impossible  to  ignore  the  successive  disasters  to 
Allied  arms,  or  to  keep  from  asking  the  question 
whether  they  who  are  waging  the  greatest  war  for 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  79 

the  right  since  the  dawn  of  time  fight  a  losing  battle. 
The  tense  anxiety  of  the  Allied  powers  is  reflected 
in  all  the  tidings  that  reach  us,  especially  in  what 
is  not  said. 

Here  in  America  is  peace ;  harvest  fields  of  plenty  ; 
smiling  and  untroubled  faces;  luxury  unchecked,  if 
all  reports  be  true,  in  our  cities  and  our  towns.  I 
find  that  I  resent  the  comfort  of  my  townspeople; 
I  resent  my  own.  Haunting  pictures  of  that  well- 
known  and  beloved  land  of  tall  poplars  and  wide 
fields  in  its  tragedy  disturb  my  dreams,  coming  in 
swift  and  terrible  glimpses. 

I  sit  on  my  doorstep  in  the  sunshine;  Andrew 
Martin,  the  grain  merchant  of  the  town,  stands  com- 
fortably in  his  shop  doorway,  while  over  there, 
mayor  and  devoted  priest  are  stood  up  against  a 
wall  and  shot. 

Mrs.  Sands  comes  daintily  down  the  street,  pick- 
ing her  way  to  keep  from  stepping  in  the  little  pools 
of  water  from  a  recent  rain;  over  there  are  sister 
women  who  walk  through  pools  of  blood. 

Shouting,  uproarious  children  are  playing  games 
in  the  field  beyond  my  shop,  bareheaded,  barefooted, 
gay;  over  there  are  the  white  children  of  Belgium, 
of  France,  of  Serbia,  dying  of  hunger,  and  murdered 
children  lying  in  meadow,  on  hillside. 

How  long,  0  Lord,  before  we  rise  to  help? 

One  knows,  of  course,  that  it  has  not  been  the 
way  of  nation  to  help  nation,  save  in  self-interest. 
Even  our  England  did  not  save  Persia.  None  have 
lifted  a  hand  in  the  matter  of  the  Armenian 
massacre.  But  may  not  our  country  have  a  higher 
vision,  a  fairer  aim,  than  has  come  to  any  country 
heretofore?  When  has  America  belonged  to  the 


80  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

world  that  has  been?  Rather,  she  rightly  belongs 
to  the  world  to  be. 

To  give  our  aid  now,  if  need  be,  our  all,  disinter- 
estedly, would  be  a  stepping-stone  to  a  higher  des- 
tiny than  any  nation  has  ever  had. 

But  nations  are  made  up  of  individuals,  and  my 
share  is  establishing  the  entente  cordiate  here  in 
Mataquoit  between  myself  and  Noah  Price  and  his 
like.  To  my  task! 


XI 


August  2. 

Again  I  must  remind  myself  that  perhaps  I  have 
as  yet  seen  only  surfaces  and  have  not  dug  down 
into  the  bed  rock  of  civic  character  here.  It  is  time 
for  me  to  begin  my  sensational  article  about  the 
noble  citizens  of  Mataquoit,  my  virtue-raking  ar- 
ticle which  will  use  the  method  of  the  muck-raking 
article,  but  to  much  finer  ends. 

I  have  been  making  inquiries  to  see  whether  I 
could  begin  with  Billions  and  have  discovered  that 
he  gave  the  town  the  little  park  about  the  library. 
So  far  so  good,  but  in  all  my  investigation  I  cannot 
find  that  he  has  given  any  citizen's  service  that  has 
cost  him  time  and  effort,  blood  and  tears.  It  is  the 
old  feudal  attitude ;  largesse  for  the  village  folk  who 
live  at  the  foot  of  his  feudal  castle;  and  Billions  is 
off  and  away  on  his  fiery  steed,  High  Finance. 

There  is  one  man  here,  named  Melton,  a  hard- 
ware merchant,  who  is  working  hard  on  a  scheme  for 
improvement  of  the  water  front,  better  wharves  and 
a  better  street  back  of  them ;  I  must  try  to  find  out 
whether  this  is  disinterested  or  even  partly  disin- 
terested, or  whether,  after  the  fashion  of  most  large 
enterprises  in  this  country,  some  vast  personal  gain 
is  the  real  objective.  Rumors  come  to  my  ears  of 
one  inhabitant  of  the  town,  Alexander  Wallace,  a 
lawyer,  about  whom  every  one,  even  Widow  Frayne, 
has  a  good  word  to  say;  he  is  away  now,  in  Canada, 


82  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

on  the  first  real  vacation  he  has  ever  had,  people 
tell  me,  since  he  came  to  Mataquoit  some  twenty 
years  ago. 

With  the  thought  of  the  future  development  of 
democracy  in  our  country  constantly  in  mind,  it  is 
impossible  to  keep  from  thinking  much  about  the 
young  men,  especially  Jack. 

Every  one  likes  him;  he  is  one  of  humanity's  in- 
stinctive comrades,  born  to  understand  his  fellows; 
born  a  friend  of  all  and  sundry  with  whom  he  comes 
in  contact. 

I  sometimes  think  that  he  is  a  distinctive  product 
and  the  best,  he  and  his  kind,  of  a  democracy.  No 
older  order  of  society  could  have  produced  a  man  of 
this  class,  so  approachable,  so  much  a  hail-fellow- 
well-met,  so  much  a  man  among  men,  and  yet  so 
exclusive,  selecting,  rejecting,  carrying  his  caste 
within  himself  and  preserving  it  with  a  steady  in- 
dividual sense  of  values.  There  is  about  him  a  fine 
wholesomeness  of  body  and  of  mind;  he  holds  his 
inner  standard  high;  even  in  looking  at  him  one  is 
aware  that  he  would  not  do  or  say  anything  touched 
with  taint  of  evil. 

Often  I  wonder  how  he  came  to  be,  with  his  gen- 
erosities, his  Tightness  of  attitude  toward  his  fellows. 
I  think  of  his  father  with  that  narrow  and  selfish 
belief  in  the  paramount  importance  of  his  own  busi- 
ness; of  his  mother,  with  her  bourgeois  sense  of 
social  importance,  her  determination  to  impress 
herself  on  all  who  come  in  contact  with  her,  to  take 
a  foremost  part,  a  shallow,  "viewy"  woman,  one  of 
the  kind  who  cannot  hear  anything  stated  in  her 
presence  without  saying  that  she  has  always  known 
it. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  83 

He  is  unpretentious,  simple  and  fine  in  his  direct 
approach  to  life  and  to  human  beings:  "Gentleman 
born  before  his  father,"  as  Shakespeare  says. 

Then  I  realize  that  it  is  because  of  the  one  great- 
ness in  those  two  people  that  he  is  what  he  is.  The 
love  of  parents  is  a  wonderful  thing;  it  is,  I  think, 
the  one  and  only  spot  of  unselfishness  in  these  two, 
and  it  is  unselfishness  absolute. 

All  their  gain  has  gone  to  his  bettering;  they  have 
lavished  upon  him  everything  that  they  possessed, 
material  and  spiritual.  They  have  sent  him  from 
them  when  they  wanted  him  near;  all  that  their 
own  childhood  and  youth  lacked  he  has  had.  He 
will  take  his  place  among  men  and  serve  his  kind  as 
they  could  never  do.  So,  through  individual  love 
and  willingness  to  sacrifice  for  love,  the  great  na- 
tional growth  comes,  the  race  mounts  upward  to  a 
finer  type.  If  parental  love  is  a  wellspring  at  which 
higher  citizenship  may  be  fed,  our  hope  is  great, 
for  there  is  no  possibility  of  the  supply  being  ex- 
hausted in  our  country. 

August  5. 

I  had  to-day  an  unpleasant  encounter  with  a  sub- 
citizen  whose  name  I  will  not  give.  He  was  a  farmer 
from  the  Green  Hill  region,  delivering  ten  pounds 
of  butter,  and  his  goods  were  under  weight.  He 
little  thought  as  he  stood  there  in  his  butternut 
brown  coat,  with  a  look  of  silly  triumph  on  his  face, 
that  the  Widow  Frayne  was  in  her  pantry,  weighing 
his  commodity  upon  those  awful  scales,  tested,  and 
as  accurate  as  those  that  will  be  used  upon  the  day 
of  judgment.  Many  a  time,  in  divers  places,  have 
I  seen  an  expression  like  this  upon  many  a  face,  a 


84  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

reflection  of  our  American  conviction  that  the  one 
thing  to  do  is  to  arrive,  to  "put  it  over."  Such  tribute 
we  pay  to  our  national  Moloch,  Success! 

When  the  facts  were  reported  to  me  I  told  the 
farmer  my  opinion  of  him  in  language  which  was, 
perhaps,  overweight. 

I  find  democracy  a  hard  creed;  the  actual  prac- 
tice is  strikingly  different  from  the  printed  formula. 
Sometimes  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  arriving  at 
any  satisfactory  basis  of  dealing  with  human  kind 
appall  me.  It  is  well  nigh  impossible  to  make  my 
instinctive  feeling  keep  pace  with  my  higher 
thought;  the  idealist  and  the  human  being  in  me 
are  unequally  yoked  together. 

And  so  to  bed,  with  my  unachieved  democracy. 

August  7. 

I  strolled  far  on  the  rocks  to-night  to  escape  noise 
and  heat.  There  are  times  when  the  multitudinous 
sounds  and  sights  and  odors  of  a  democracy  obscure 
my  thought  of  what  a  democracy  should  be.  At 
such  times  I  find  nothing  so  efficacious  as  the  horizon 
line  of  the  sea  in  restoring  my  vision. 

There  was  a  breeze;  there  was  an  incoming  tide, 
and  my  spirit  freshened.  Tim  made  joyous  dashes 
over  the  rocks,  starting  up  the  gulls,  then  began 
barking  furiously,  and  I  knew  that,  behind  the  rock, 
was  either  a  human  being  or  a  weasel.  I  really  must 
teach  him  to  distinguish!  He  has  his  moments  of 
boorishness,  of  which  I  find  it  hard  to  cure  him;  I 
am  trying  hard  to  teach  him  to  be  a  gentleman. 

As  I  feared,  it  was  a  human  being,  and  my  rebuke 
to  him  was  all  the  more  severe  because  it  proved  to 
be  none  other  than  Miss  Katharine  Brown. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  85 

Here  was  a  dilemma !  Should  I  obey  the  mandate 
of  Ami  K.  Brown,  the  magnate,  not  to  hold  com- 
munication with  his  daughter,  or  should  I  greet  the 
daughter  of  my  old  college  classmate,  Billions 
Brown,  as  one  greets  the  daughter  of  a  friend?  In 
all  my  life  no  social  question  so  perplexing  had  been 
presented  to  me. 

The  matter  was  taken  out  of  my  hands,  for  Miss 
Brown,  after  giving  me  a  friendly  greeting,  detained 
me  with  an  imperious  little  gesture,  as  one  who  is 
accustomed  to  be  obeyed.  How  swiftly,  in  America, 
these  reigning  houses  learn  to  rule! 

She  had,  it  seemed,  several  questions  to  ask.  So 
we  took  up  the  discussion  begun  the  other  day  in 
my  shop  at  the  precise  point  where  we  had  dropped 
it.  I  found  myself  saying  more  than  I  had  meant 
to  about  the  great  issue;  about  the  part  every  one 
of  us  could  play  in  helping  on  the  crusade  of  cru- 
sades; about  our  wakening  sense  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  man  to  man,  which  should  make  the  days 
of  peace  following  this  struggle  greater  than  the 
days  which  preceded  it. 

At  first  she  stood  listening,  with  her  intelligent, 
gray,  asking  eyes  upon  me,  the  pupils  slowly  dilating, 
a  light  coming  and  going  in  her  face  like  flame. 
When  she  spoke,  it  was  with  a  passionate  intensity 
that  belied  the  quiet  repose  of  her  bearing.  The 
smile  that  played  now  and  then  about  her  lips  bore 
no  relation  to  her  real  feeling,  but  was  rather,  in 
its  conventional  sweetness,  a  social  mask  which  she 
had  been  taught  to  wear. 

In  my  turn,  I  became  the  listener,  or  rather  the 
watcher,  for  her  swift  sentences  were  as  a  sudden 
flashlight  upon  the  troubled  soul  of  a  girl.  It  was 


86  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

not  that  she  said  much;  her  training  forbade  that 
in  this  chance  meeting  with  an  humble  personage 
who  was  almost  a  stranger,  but  she  made  me  aware 
of  an  eagerness  to  find  her  working  place  among 
mankind,  and  I  found  myself  saying  over, concerning 
her,  words  that  had  come  to  my  mind  in  seeing  the 
faded,  sun-baked  countrywoman  but  a  few  days  ago : 
loneliness,  and  utter  isolation.  It  were  hard  to  tell 
whether  the  daughter  of  extreme  poverty  or  the 
daughter  of  extreme  wealth,  exiled  among  material 
possessions,  was  the  more  wretched. 

There  should  be  no  such  loneliness  in  a  common- 
wealth, no  such  separation  of  interests  between  high 
and  low. 

Our  interview  terminated  rather  abruptly;  pos- 
sibly Miss  Brown  realized  that  she  had  said  more 
than  she  intended.  She  thanked  me  with  a  wistful 
sweetness  as  I  lifted  my  hat  and  started  to  move 
on.  Two  splendid,  red-brown  Irish  setters  came 
leaping  to  escort  her  on  her  farther  walk,  and  I 
watched  her  as  she  mounted  the  rocks  and  paused 
for  a  minute  on  the  highest,  with  the  breeze  playing 
about  her. 

As  she  stood  on  the  headland,  all  in  white,  with 
the  wind  in  her  fluttering  white  draperies,  she 
brought  again  a  suggestion  of  Greek  reliefs,  of  the 
freely  moving  feet  and  limbs  of  Greek  maidens  in 
sacrificial  procession;  and  I  reflected  that  the  feet 
of  womankind  never  move  with  utmost  joyousness 
until  they  find  the  way  of  sacrifice. 

After  she  disappeared,  I  went  on  my  way  with  my 
plebeian  Tim,  thinking. 

It  is  strange  how  much  you  can  tell  about  some 
people  by  merely  looking  at  them.  I  knew  that  this 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  87 

young  creature  was  a  bit  headstrong  and  determined, 
yet  sweet  and  fine;  I  knew  that,  if  the  flame  of  faith, 
conviction,  were  but  once  lighted  in  those  gray  eyes, 
it  would  burn  steadfastly  through  life  to  death, — 
and  after. 

I  pitied  now  the  little  questioning  flickers  there, 
youth,  trying  to  find  out,  uncertain  of  its  place. 
Men  talk  of  these  early  years  as  the  happiest  time; 
how  often  it  is  the  hardest,  because  of  the  tangled 
paths,  the  difficulty  in  finding  the  way! 

The  possibilities  that  were  in  this  girl  that  would 
never  be  wakened  by  the  present  conditions  of  her 
life  were  clearly  apparent  to  me,  as  was  an  elemental 
impetuosity  under  her  finished  manner;  God  has 
given  me  eyes  for  a  certain  understanding  of  my 
kind.  She  is  capable  of  staunchest  adherence  to  a 
belief,  to  a  line  of  action,  as  well  as,  if  fate  will  but 
grant  the  right  one,  to  an  individual;  capable  of 
passion  for  a  man,  for  a  faith. 

And  I  know  that,  when  Billions  Brown's  daughter 
does  find  her  way,  things  present  or  things  absent 
or  things  to  come,  nor  height  nor  depth  nor  any 
other  creature,  not  even  Billions  himself,  can  stop 
her. 

August  10. 

Alas!  The  overwhelming  magnitude,  the  com- 
plexity of  experience  at  this  moment  is  too  much 
for  individual  consciousness  to  grasp.  No  man,  no 
group  of  men,  no  nation  really  understands.  This 
midsummer  air,  apparently  still,  is  quivering  with 
the  tensity  of  the  moment  in  which  humanity  is 
being  weighed  in  the  balance  as  never  before. 

It  is  not  the  war  only  that  makes  a  crisis  in  our 


88  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

race  development.  For  a  period  of  a  few  years  pre- 
ceding the  war  many  of  us  were  conscious  of  a  tense- 
ness, an  immense  unrest.  There  was  an  unwonted 
quarrelsomeness  among  people,  even  in  the  world 
of  ideas  and  ideals,  a  clash  of  tendencies,  and  with 
it  a  something  sensational  in  life  and  in  art,  of  which 
the  outre,  the  bizarre  in  poetry  and  hi  picture  are 
illustrations.  There  was  wide-spread  irritability,  a 
spiritual  querulousness,  a  sense  of  things  falling 
apart. 

Doubtless  many  shared  the  conviction  which  the 
pre-war  period  brought  to  me  that  the  race  has  gone 
too  swiftly,  with  headlong  speed  that  threatens  to 
carry  us  over  the  precipice.  There  has  been  more 
invention,  more  discovery  of  material  fact  than  we 
can  assimilate.  How  slowly  the  wounded  and  de- 
serted soul  of  man  limps  after  the  over-triumphant 
body,  speeding  in  automobiles  and  in  aeroplanes, 
unconscious  of  its  loss,  unaware  that  it  has  thrown 
overboard  that  eternal  passenger  for  whom  the 
journey  of  existence  was  undertaken! 

Is  it  often  the  case,  I  wonder,  that  the  end  of  a 
period,  the  beginning  of  another,  makes  itself  so 
clearly  manifest?  Those  pre-war  days,  full  of  the 
dry  sultriness  that  precedes  a  storm,  the  air  empty 
and  waiting;  and  this  appalling  tempest  which 
deafens  our  ears  with  its  crashes,  will  give  place, 
we  hope,  to  fairer  weather,  to  a  long  day  in  which 
the  young  of  to-day  may  mature,  may  see  their  way 
clearly,  may  do  their  work. 

The  creaking  of  the  wheels  of  change  is  loud 
within  my  ears  in  this  still  air  of  Mataquoit. 


XII 


August  12. 

Yesterday  I  saw  Jack  and  Miss  Katharine  Brown 
playing  tennis  together;  to-day,  as  he  and  I  were 
sitting  on  the  bench  by  my  shop  door,  she  was  driven 
past,  and  I  watched  his  face  as  he  greeted  her.  Not 
a  word  was  said,  but  the  look  in  his  eyes  made  me 
aware  that  never,  in  all  my  many  years,  have  I  come 
so  close  to  vital  forces,  to  life  in  the  making.  He 
never  speaks  of  her  to  me;  his  silence  tells  more 
than  words  could  do. 

I  have  been  tempted  to  ask  of  Mrs.  Sands  release 
from  my  promise  to  keep  from  giving  him  any 
admonition  in  regard  to  the  world  struggle  and  our 
duties  therein,  but  I  have  not  done  so.  Yet  there 
is,  and  has  been  from  the  first,  a  curious  understand- 
ing between  us,  and  my  enforced  silence  deepens  it. 
Even  if  I  say  no  word,  he  is  increasingly  aware  of 
my  inner  conviction  that,  not  to  have  understood, 
not  to  have  taken  sides,  not  to  have  helped,  will  be 
to  have  failed  utterly  in  the  greatest  crisis  since 
the  dawn  of  time.  Better  never  to  have  been  born 
than  to  have  failed  to  make  a  decision,  to  have 
ranged  oneself  on  the  side  of  the  right. 

Here  is  Jack,  with  the  splendid  young  strength 
of  him,  and  the  splendid  young  heart  of  him,  waiting 
to  be  roused,  waiting  for  a  chance  to  spend  his  force 
in  the  battle  of  humanity.  The  great  struggle  is 


90  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

here ;  it  has  to  be  fought.  How  can  he  face  himself 
in  later  years  if  he  takes  no  part  in  it? 

But  my  lips  are  sealed. 

I  am  shocked,  startled  by  the  intensity  of  my 
f eeling  in  regard  to  this  boy ;  it  is  more  disinterested 
than  any  I  have  ever  known,  for  it  asks  nothing  in 
return,  yet  at  the  same  time  it  is  more  elemental, 
more  savage  than  any  emotion  I  have  ever  felt. 
The  thought  of  any  evil  influence  coming  near  him 
before  his  nature  flowers  fills  me  with  potential  rage. 
The  fear  that  he  may  fail  to  fulfil  his  highest  des- 
tiny brings  me  at  times  a  poignant  suffering.  It  is 
at  once  the  most  passionate  and  the  most  spiritual 
emotion  that  I  have  ever  had. 

Whence  comes  this  resurgence  of  primitive  man 
in  me,  this  hand  clenched  to  ward  off  a  blow  which 
nobody  threatens?  It  is  as  if,  in  putting  off  all  the 
artificial  things  of  my  life  for  a  disinterested  intel- 
lectual purpose,  I  had  come  unexpectedly  upon  the 
primal  human  emotions. 

How  ironic  is  this  effort  to  understand  my  kind! 
I  do  not  understand  even  myself. 

August  13. 

A  flying  drift  of  talk  comes  in  through  my  open 
windows;  a  little  foam  and  spray  break  constantly 
on  corner  and  curbstone  as  people  stand  or  stroll. 
Within  how  small  a  space,  in  how  inconsiderable  a 
village,  may  one  see  reflected  the  ways  of  thought 
of  an  entire  people !  One  could  gauge  public  opinion 
in  regard  to  the  war  the  country  over  by  chance 
comments  that  one  hears  in  Mataquoit. 

I  cannot  help  feeling  that  an  individual's  aware- 
ness of  the  present  struggle  and  of  its  significance 


A   WORLD    TO   MEND  91 

is,  in  a  way,  a  measure  of  his  fitness  to  become  a 
citizen  in  the  democracy  that  is  to  be.  Surely  we 
are  all  facing  an  issue  that  is  a  supreme  test  of  our 
sense  of  others'  need. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  growth  toward  understanding 
is  uneven;  all  stages  are  represented.  Doubtless 
human  progress  is  always  something  jagged  and  ir- 
regular; the  differing  strata  are  curiously  imbedded, 
one  with  another,  and  variously  interwrought.  Dif- 
ferent people  in  the  village  have  come  to  symbolize 
for  me  different  phases  of  the  awakening  through- 
out the  entire  land. 

Old  Madam  Strong,  in  the  big  house  on  the  hill, 
with  the  stone  gateway  crowned  with  balls,  has  not 
yet  heard  of  the  war,  I  am  told.  At  least,  when  her 
maid  mentioned  it  to  her  in  August,  1914,  she  was 
forbidden  to  speak  of  it  again,  and  she  has  obeyed. 
Unpleasant  recent  occurrences  are  allowed  no  plajCe 
in  her  ancestral  world.  Whatever  reading  matter 
Madam  Strong  needs  is  drawn  from  her  large  library 
of  eighteenth-century  works,  bound  in  calf;  news- 
papers and  all  other  periodicals  she  disdains. 

The  Honorable  Hiram  Banks,  our  Congressman, 
who  lives  near  Madam  Strong,  son  of  an  old  and 
honored  family  here,  says  that  the  war  is  no  con- 
cern of  ours;  let  them  fight  it  out;  it  is  England's 
job,  and  that  of  France.  That  we  are  benefiting  in 
our  continued  safety  by  their  anguish  he  is  aware, 
but  a  good  American,  he  thinks,  should  take  all  he 
can  get  honestly-  He  has  an  idea  that  no  dis- 
aster could  ever  reach  him  inside  his  iron-wrought 
fence. 

John  Sands  thinks  of  it  only  in  connection  with 
his  chain  of  department  stores  in  Maine  towns;  he 


92  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

is  afraid  that  it  is  going  to  hurt  his  business.  So, 
the  country  over,  many  men. 

Mrs.  Sands  is  still  in  her  state  of  stupid  superiority 
to  the  whole  tragedy;  there  are  many  of  her  kind. 
But  you  cannot  rest  content  with  striking  a  moral 
attitude  in  the  face  of  an  appalling  calamity  like 
this;  you  have  got  to  help.  It  is  no  time  to  stop, 
in  the  midst  of  a  great  conflagration,  to  say  that 
you  do  not  believe  in  fires. 

Billions,  undoubtedly,  dislikes  the  war  because  it 
interferes  with  the  service  at  his  house,  drawing 
away  some  of  his  trained  domestics;  and  because  it 
has  somewhat  disorganized  his  vast  oil  enterprises, 
as  experts  have  gone  back  to  fight  under  their  re- 
spective flags. 

A  certain  provincialism  enfolds  Mataquoit,  a  sense 
of  being  an  individual  entity,  set  off  by  itself,  with 
no  share  in  the  larger  world,  no  need  of  the  larger 
world.  This  village  feeling  of  the  isolation  of  the 
village  and  of  its  supreme  importance,  as,  in  a  way, 
the  center  of  a  universe,  is  doubtless  reflected  more 
or  less  clearly  in  every  town  and  every  community 
from  Canada  to  Mexico,  from  sea  to  sea. 

Yet  all  these  people  whose  attitudes  I  have  been 
studying  are  older  folk;  it  is  the  young  who  really 
matter.  As  yet,  those  I  have  observed  show  too 
little  concern;  they  are  busy  with  the  mere  plays 
and  games  of  life;  yet  they  shall  not  escape  the 
greater  destiny  that  is  coming  irresistibly  toward 
them,  to  sweep  them  from  the  ball  field,  the  soda 
fountain,  the  moving-picture  theater,  out  to  the  edge 
of  the  world,  to  stand  face  to  face  with  death. 

The  most  hopeful  sign  of  the  times  is  given  by 
the  war  charities  which  flourish  up  and  down  the 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  93 

land.  War  work  is  everywhere;  women  are  sewing, 
knitting,  and  rolling  bandages ;  and  men  and  women 
are  giving  generously  of  their  substance  in  response 
to  every  plea.  Even  though  we  are  not  as  yet  in 
the  struggle,  the  soul  of  America  is  awakening;  we 
can  not  all  reach  the  marching  line  at  the  same 
time.  ...  I  have  not  seen  Jack  for  four  days. 

August  16. 

Miss  Katharine  Brown  walked  down  the  village 
street  to-day  in  her  white  freshness,  and  behind  her, 
in  pallid,  spectral  procession,  those  martyred  girls  of 
France  and  Belgium  who  had  suffered  worse  than 
death  and  still  were  living.  I  saw  their  eyes,  with 
youth  dead  in  them. 

The  vision  of  these  comes  often,  with  the  deepest 
arraignment  of  any  of  our  alleged  civilization.  One 
grows  a  bit  fanciful  living  alone,  unaware,  at  times, 
of  the  difference  between  what  one  actually  sees  and 
what  the  memory  of  printed  words  brings  to  mind. 

I  wince  a  bit  now  at  seeing  young  girls,  thinking 
of  those  others  whom  the  manhood  of  the  world  has 
failed  to  protect.  Men  have  had  the  ruling  of  the 
world  since  the  dawn  of  time;  to  all  men  comes 
a  special  shame  at  the  thought  of  these  things,  nor 
shall  we  men  of  America  hold  up  our  heads  in  future 
days  if  we  pass  by  on  the  other  side  of  the  wounded 
and  the  suffering. 

Perhaps  I  write  over- vehemently ;  I  could  not 
have  written  thus  in  my  youth.  If  I  had,  my  Eng- 
lish teachers  would  not  have  permitted  me  to  leave 
such  expressions  on  paper,  my  English  teachers  who 
tried  to  teach  raw  lads  to  analyze  human  nature  in 
the  cool  and  unconcerned  fashion  of  Henry  James. 


94  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

I  am  not  writing,  however,  as  vehemently  as  I 
feel;  the  sting  to  my  manhood  of  the  knowledge  of 
unspeakable  cruelties  that  demand  swift  punish- 
ment, the  consciousness  that  these  things  be  and 
that  I  may  not  go  to  help,  keeps  pain  alive  and 
quick  within  me  through  all  my  quiet  nights  and 
days.  To  know  this  hour  and  not  to  be  matched 
with  it;  to  get  the  full  anguish  of  observing,  of 
waiting;  to  see  the  strong  and  beautiful  young  of 
other  lands  go  out,  singing,  to  meet  it  —  ah,  there 
are  many  ways  of  being  crucified  for  one's  kind! 

August  18.      , 

The  village,  as  I  have  said  before,  has  its  library, 
small,  stone,  Carnegie.  Fortunately  the  vines  are 
growing  over  it,  so  that  it  does  not  look  wholly  an 
alien  and  extraneous  thing,  but  begins  to  blend  with 
the  mellower  tones  of  the  old  town.  I  never  cross 
the  green  spaces  of  Billions  Brown's  little  park,  or 
pass  under  the  inscription  over  the  entrance  of  the 
building  to  the  liberality  of  the  donor,  without  won- 
dering what  joy  there  could  have  been  for  these  two 
philanthropists  in  standing  in  the  crowded  ways  of 
human  life  and  picking  one  pocket  in  order  to  thrust 
its  contents  into  another.  Conscience  tells  me  that 
I  am  overstating;  doubtless  all  the  business  enter- 
prises of  both  kings  of  finance  have  been  strictly 
within  the  letter  of  the  law;  but  do  the  faces  of  the 
thousands  of  lads  who,  thanks  to  Carnegie's  benefi- 
cence, need  never  go  without  an  education,  make  up 
for  the  starved  faces,  intellectually  and  spiritually 
starved,  of  the  lads  who  worked  under  the  iron  hand 
in  Homestead  long  ago?  However,  this  is  no  way 
for  me  to  talk,  who  go,  many  an  afternoon,  to  read 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  95 

in  the  Carnegie  Library,  conscious  that  in  so  doing 
I  am  sharing  a  bit  of  the  spoil  of  souls. 

When  I  went  in  this  afternoon  both  Jack  and 
Katharine  Brown  were  there,  reading,  at  the  same 
table,  and  I  wondered  if  Billions  Brown  knew  that 
his  daughter  was  using  common  books  in  a  common 
library.  It  amused  me  to  think  of  some  of  the  great 
steel  baron's  loot  being  thrust  into  the  delicate 
pocket,  or  hand  bag,  or  whatever  it  was,  of  this  child 
of  luxury.  But,  if  she  wanted  books,  she  doubtless 
had  to  come  here ;  there  would  be  every  thing  except 
books  in  the  huge  house  on  the  cliff. 

From  my  position  in  the  stacks  I  watched  them. 
I  saw  Jack  rise  from  his  seat  and  go  over  to  place 
the  book  he  was  reading  before  Katharine,  pointing 
to  an  item;  it  was  the  Bryce  report  on  the  Belgian 
atrocities.  She  read,  —  and  read  again;  their  eyes 
met,  and  the  same  flame  was  in  them  both :  passion 
to  serve;  passion  to  atone,  —  flame  kindling  flame. 

In  no  eyes  of  youth  of  my  generation,  or  in  the 
years  between  my  own  youth  and  to-day,  have  I 
seen  such  an  outgoing  of  life,  such  a  forgetting  of 
self  as  in  the  eyes  of  these  two.  Perhaps  because 
the  library  rules  enjoined  stillness  they  said  no  word, 
but  I  hardly  think  they  would  have  spoken  had 
they  been  under  the  open  sky,  with  no  one  near. 

I  thought  of  Paolo  and  Francesca,  with  their 
heads  bent  over  a  book  whose  words  enchained  the 
two  together  for  all  eternity :  "that  day  they  read  no 
further";  but  here  was  no  kiss,  no  mere  personal 
passion. 

They  shook  hands.  The  young  of  to-day  are 
oddly  businesslike  and  matter  of  fact  in  their  de- 
meanor! No  one  but  myself  saw  in  this  anything 


96  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

but  an  ordinary  handshake,  I  fancy;  after  a  few 
minutes  the  two  went  their  different  ways.  But  I 
saw  in  it  a  pledge  to  act,  to  be  of  service,  to  help 
undo  the  wrong.  Not  for  revenge ;  those  two  young 
faces  showed  but  the  divine  impulse  of  youth  to 
atone,  to  wipe  out  the  wrong-doing  of  their  prede- 
cessors, to  make  all  things  fair  and  new. 

As  I  limped  down  the  village  street  I  felt  like  one 
from  whose  shoulders  a  great  burden  has  been  rolled. 

August  22. 

A  foggy  morning ;  Mataquoit  is  wet  and  cheerless. 
Water  condenses  and  drips  from  ears,  hair,  from  the 
straw  hats  of  my  neighbors. 

The  air  is  heavy  in  my  shop,  even  as  my  mind  is 
heavy ;  for  the  first  time  I  almost  regret  my  coming. 
Who  am  I  that  I  should  thrust  my  hands  into  other 
lives?  Has  my  own  life  been  so  worthy  and  so 
successful  that  I  should  try  to  influence  others? 
Who  am  I  that  I  should  come  to  Mataquoit  to  set 
the  fathers  against  the  children  and  the  children 
against  the  fathers?  Or  to  try  to  fathom  even  a 
little  that  impenetrable  mystery,  the  human  soul? 

What  the  devil  is  democracy,  anyway? 

Billions  is  angry  with  me ;  doubtless  his  daughter 
is  proving  rebellious,  and  he  has  discovered  that  she 
has  had  further  talk  with  me.  No  medieval  lord 
could  have  given  sterner  greeting  to  a  disobedient 
vassal  than  Billions  gave  me  to-day;  I  wonder  if  he 
will  exercise  his  feudal  privilege  and  have  me 
dropped  into  boiling  oil. 

Mrs.  Sands  is  evidently  also  displeased ;  she  wears 
an  anxious  and  foreboding  look  upon  her  face.  Yet 
these  two  should  not  hold  me  to  too  great  an  extent 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  97 

responsible:  did  I  create  youth  or  the  heart  of 
youth? 

And  the  war  goes  wrong;  with  it  the  whole  world 
goes  wrong.  It  has  been  a  sorry  second  year  of 
fighting,  with  loss  on  every  side  except  that  inner, 
indestructible  front,  "man's  unconquerable  mind." 

These  idlers  in  the  streets,  about  the  grocery, 
shambling  past  my  windows,  calling  out  imperti- 
nences to  one  another  —  what  have  I  to  do  with  all 
this  commonness?  Why  not  stand  far  away  and  be 
clean  of  it  all? 

Ah,  my  faltering  love  for  humanity,  how  can  it 
be  made  strong? 

About  eleven  o'clock  the  fog  lifted;  a  breath  of 
life  came  on  the  rising  breeze;  there  was  a  bit  more 
stirring  on  the  street. 

Then  I  saw  a  curious  sight ;  one  of  Brown's  finest 
equipages  was  driving  past,  with  coachman,  foot- 
man, and  superb  horses,  polished  and  shining.  In 
the  trap,  erect,  unbending,  sat  a  tiny  little  old  lady, 
plain,  severe,  with  snow-white  hair  under  an  old- 
fashioned  bonnet.  She  wore  simple,  antiquated 
clothes,  all  black,  save  for  a  white  frill  in  her  bonnet. 

In  front  of  her  was  an  ancestral  rocker,  of  the 
Governor  Bradford  type,  wedged  in  tight,  for  there 
was  barely  room  for  it. 

The  postman,  who  was  at  my  door,  burst  out 
laughing  and  told  me  that  it  was  Billions'  mother. 
Every  year  she  visits  him  for  a  month  or  two  and 
whenever  she  comes  she  brings  her  own  little  sewing 
chair  with  her,  because,  she  says,  there  is  nothing 
in  her  son's  house  comfortable  to  sit  on.  What  ar- 
rangements are  made  for  bringing  it  on  the  train 
with  her,  nobody  knows. 


98  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

"A  spicy  little  old  lady,  all  right/'  said  the  post- 
man; "it's  easy  to  see  where  Brown  got  his  brains 
and  his  stick-to-it-ive-ness." 

I  think  of  Miss  Katharine  Brown  and  wonder 
whether  Heaven  has  sent  her  an  ally. 


XIII 

August  25. 

Strolled  along  a  bypath  at  the  edge  of  the 
marshes  out  to  the  bridge  that  spans  the  tidal  river. 
I  go  there  now  and  then  of  an  evening  to  sit  on  the 
parapet  and  smoke  my  pipe,  Tim  at  my  heels,  as 
always.  Now  and  then  a  passer-by  nods  to  me,  and 
a  neighbor  has  been  known  to  sit  down  beside  me 
and  talk  of  town  affairs,  —  the  last  appropriation 
made  at  town  meeting,  or  the  church  debt.  From 
the  far-stretching  green  of  the  marsh  grasses  to  the 
gulls  that  float  and  fly  with  sunset  on  their  wings  it 
is  a  world  of  incredible  peace  and  beauty.  These 
young  lads  who  pass,  in  their  best  clothes,  intent  on 
calling  and  on  courting,  betray  no  shadow  of  the 
menace  of  these  hours,  no  look  of  apprehension  in 
regard  to  the  days  to  be ;  may  life  grant  them  some 
tithe  at  least  of  the  hopes  they  wear  upon  their 
faces ! 

Sometimes,  as  I  sit  or  stroll  here  alone  at  twilight, 
my  mind  turns  back  to  its  old  habit  of  speculative 
thought,  the  old  inquiries  as  to  the  why  and  where- 
fore of  existence.  I  sternly  recall  it,  however;  there 
is  no  time  in  this  world  of  war  for  such  questioning. 
It  is  strange  that  the  days  of  deepest  stress,  of  most 
overwhelming  disaster  are  the  ones  in  which  we 
cling  most  resolutely  to  a  conviction  that  there  is 
meaning  somewhere  in  life.  It  is  in  the  most  awful 


100  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

moments  that  we  know  most  clearly  that  we  must 
not  let  go. 

At  these  times  I  often  wonder  at  the  anxious  days 
of  my  youth  spent  in  intellectual  doubt  and  ques- 
tioning, in  trying  to  work  out  my  thought  of  Christi- 
anity. There  was  with  me  a  troubled  feeling  of 
being  outcast,  because  of  formal  tenets,  theological 
assertions  that  I  could  accept,  as  did  those  dear 
to  me.  I  could  not  conform  without  accepting  them, 
nor  say  I  believed  without  believing  them.  How 
far  away  and  unimportant  now  seems  all  anxious 
thought  about  shades  of  assent  to  mere  doctrine! 
It  is  no  longer  a  question  as  to  how  we  shall  receive 
Christianity;  the  supremely  important  thing  is  that 
we  shall  receive  it.  No,  that  is  too  passive  a  word. 
—  that  we  shall  reach  out  and  hold  it,  with  pas- 
sionate strength  of  purpose.  The  anguish  of  the 
moment  compels  a  deeper  faith  than  I  had  ever 
dreamed;  the  issue  is  no  longer  between  different 
intellectual  aspects  of  belief,  but  between  Christi- 
anity and  a  horrible  paganism,  potent  through 
modern  science  as  paganism  has  never  before  been, 
conscienceless  through  Christianity  cast  off  as 
paganism  has  never  before  been;  for  the  finer 
standard,  known,  and  repudiated,  works  havoc  as  ig- 
norance of  the  standard  never  could  have  done. 
Whatever  happens,  those  who  hold  the  faith  in  any 
form  must  band  together  to  fight  shoulder  to  shoul- 
der against  the  monster  something  that  comes  creep- 
ing up  out  of  primeval  darkness,  bringing  hate  and 
force  and  lust  in  its  train.  There  is,  fundamentally, 
but  one  thought  in  the  world  to-day,  consuming  all 
other  thoughts,  Christianity. 

Never,  in  all  the  intervening  centuries,  has  the 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  101 

significance  of  Christianity  shone  out  so  clearly,  not 
as  a  mere  creed,  but  as  a  life ;  never  has  its  one  deep 
meaning  of  love,  great  even  to  sacrifice,  been  so 
clear  or  so  compelling;  never  before  has  the  world 
understood  as  it  understands  now  the  full  import  of 
the  herald  message:  "Peace  on  earth."  Many  of 
us  have  thought  of  that  as  a  sweet  and  melodious 
greeting,  and,  interpreted  for  us  by  many  an  art, 
it  comes  to  us  in  a  thousand  ways,  on  the  wings  of 
music,  on  the  wings  of  poetry,  on  the  wings,  —  and 
none  are  quite  so  beautiful  (the  gulls  just  reminded 
me)  as  early  Italian  art.  Perhaps  none  of  us  have 
ever  realized  that  the  herald  angels  were  making,  in 
the  name  of  the  future,  in  behalf  of  the  powers  of 
Heaven,  the  one  promise  through  which  a  higher  life 
could  become  possible,  pointing  out  the  one  way 
through  which  hates  and  grudges  could  die,  and  love 
could  come  to  mankind  for  its  salvation  and  its 
healing.  And  it  is  for  us  to  make  that  promise  good : 
Peace  on  earth. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  I  find  the  pastors  of  the 
two  rival  churches  here,  the  Congregationalist  and 
the  Unitarian,  preaching  at  each  other,  trying  to 
mend  and  strengthen  the  fence  between  their  re- 
spective freeholds  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  instead 
of  trying  to  tear  it  down?  These  two  men  are  much 
in  my  mind  as  I  attempt  to  carry  out  my  task  of 
ascertaining  how  my  fellow  townsmen  are  fulfilling 
their  high  duties  of  citizenship  in  a  democracy.  I 
have  listened  to  much  reasoned  demonstration  from 
each  of  them ;  they  are  both  trying  to  advance  legal 
proof  of  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evi- 
dence of  things  not  seen,  and  this  in  a  world  crying 
out  for  assurance  of  things  divine. 


102  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

August  26. 

Jack  and  Katharine  Brown  are  much  in  my  mind, 
and  I  often  take  refuge  from  my  many  troublesome 
lines  of  thought  in  my  growing  affectionate  interest 
in  them.  Humanity  sometimes  has  to  stand  and  wait 
while  I  ponder  on  these  two  young  people.  How 
many  times  they  have  met,  or  what  they  may  have 
said,  what  chance  word  or  look  has  drifted  from  one 
to  another  I  do  not  know.  There  has  doubtless  been 
a  certain  amount  of  social  intercourse  presided 
over  by  the  conscript  matrons  of  Mataquoit; 
there  are  circles  which  a  cobbler  may  not  penetrate. 
Ami  K.  Brown,  I  am  told,  graciously  condescends  to 
the  social  activities  and  is  much  praised  therefor; 
both  his  elder  daughter  and  her  younger  sister  Clare 
are  seen  at  gatherings  of  people  of  their  years.  Of 
the  two  in  whom  my  interest  deepens  day  by  day 
I  know  only  what  I  have  seen  and  heard,  which  is 
little,  and  what  I  see  in  the  two  faces,  which  is  much. 
Lonely  people  sometimes  learn  to  read  faces.  They 
stopped  to  chat  for  a  moment  on  the  street  corner 
the  other  day,  then  went  smiling  their  different 
ways.  Jack's  state  of  mind  is  clearer  than  the  hand- 
writing on  the  wall;  that  which  has  been  inevitable 
from  the  first  moment  of  their  meeting  has  hap- 
pened, but  I  have  no  way  of  knowing  whether  Miss 
Brown's  feeling  toward  him  is  more  than  a  friendly 
liking. 

Only,  I  tremble  in  my  boots,  in  all  my  boots  on 
floor  and  wall,  at  the  thought  of  the  two  when  I 
see  Billions  driving  past.  Judging  not  only  by 
what  he  said  to  me,  but  by  all  his  baronial  ways  and 
appurtenances,  there  is  trouble  ahead.  Is  there  any 
place  in  all  his  massive  pile  —  it  is  indeed  a  pile  — 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  103 

where  he  will  wall  his  daughter  up  alive,  if  he  finds 
that  she  is  not  only  thinking  thoughts  that  are  not 
his,  but  is  setting  her  affection  on  the  son  of  a  man 
less  wealthy  than  he? 

Jack  is  as  friendly  as  ever,  but  he  talks  only  of 
surface  things,  automobiles,  golf  balls,  the  autumn 
sporting  events  at  college.  Yet,  under  all  this,  I 
am  aware  of  a  deepening  and  enlarging  something 
in  him.  When  he  is  not  chaffing,  his  face  takes  on 
a  seriousness  that  I  have  never  seen  there,  though 
he  immediately  begins  to  whistle  if  I  catch  his  eye. 

The  thought  of  the  two  brings  me  a  feeling  of 
freshness,  of  exhilaration,  and  casts  a  little  ray  of 
hope  across  the  future. 

August  29. 

I  was  greatly  surprised  this  morning  by  a  visit 
from  the  mother  of  Billions  Brown.  If  my  calls  in- 
crease at  this  rate  I  shall  soon  believe  that  my  shop 
is  the  social  center  of  Mataquoit.  She  was  just  as 
erect,  just  as  detached  from  her  surroundings  as 
when  I  had  seen  her  in  the  trap.  She  walked ;  I  did 
not  ask  her  why,  but  I  decided  that  she  did  not  care 
to  trust,  oftener  than  need  be,  the  bones  of  an 
earlier  generation  to  the  perilous  equipages  of  this. 

Her  errand  was  a  curious  one,  and  it  took  one 
back  a  generation.  She  had  worked  for  her  son  a 
pair  of  old-fashioned,  flowered  carpet  slippers,  and 
had  brought  them  to  me  to  have  them  soled.  Her 
keen  old  eyes  twinkled  as  she  gave  them  to  me;  I 
could  not  help  thinking,  in  the  light  of  what  I  had 
been  told  of  her,  that  she  had  made  them  partly  to 
tease  Ami,  by  bringing  a  reminder  of  his  old  and 
homely  surroundings  into  his  new  world  of  splendor. 


104  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

Her  business  done,  she  hesitated  a  minute,  and 
then,  saying  that  there  was  something  she  would 
like  to  talk  over  with  me,  she  introduced  herself. 
I  hastily  assured  her  that  this  was  unnecessary  and 
begged  her  to  be  seated  in  my  armchair. 

Her  granddaughter  had  told  her  about  her  talks 
with  me  and  about  her  father's  vexation  that  she  had 
made  friends  with  the  cobbler.  Billions,  it  would 
seem,  had  informed  her  of  his  old  acquaintance  with 
me,  but  had  said  nothing  of  this  to  his  daughter. 

"Katharine  was  afraid  she  had  done  something 
wrong,"  said  the  old  lady,  looking  at  me  in  friendly 
fashion  from  a  pair  of  shrewd  dark  eyes :  "I  wanted 
to  see  for  myself." 

Then,  like  a  general,  she  went  straight  to  her  ob- 
jective point.  She  would  like  to  know  something  of 
this  young  man  of  whom  her  son  had  been  speaking. 
Who  was  he?  What  did  I  think  of  him? 

I  told  her  at  some  length. 

"Then  you  think  it  is  all  right?" 

I  assured  her  that,  from  my  point  of  view,  the 
undefined  "it"  was  all  right.  She  nodded. 

"I  thought  from  what  my  son  said  about  you  that 
I  could  trust  your  judgment,  though  he  does  not 
himself,  in  this  case.  He  used  to  talk  about  you 
when  you  were  boys;  he  had  a  great  idea  of  your 
opinion  in  those  days." 

Then  she  changed  the  subject;  no  society  woman 
could  have  done  better.  She  was  glad  of  the  books 
I  had  lent  her  granddaughter;  her  son's  attitude  in 
regard  to  the  war  troubled  her.  She  herself  had  knit 
more  than  a  hundred  pairs  of  stockings  for  the  Allied 
soldiers;  somebody  in  the  family  had  to  do  some- 
thing to  help,  she  said  sternly. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  105 

Nodding  under  her  old-fashioned  bonnet,  she  told 
me  to  go  on;  to  do  whatever  I  could  for  the  girl. 
All  the  time  she  was  with  me,  I  felt  as  if  some  one 
were  writing  a  character  sketch  of  Katharine;  the 
keen  directness  of  look,  the  way  of  speaking,  the 
fine  simplicity  recalled  her  granddaughter  and 
largely  solved  the  problem  of  the  young  girl's  per- 
sonality. Looking  at  her  I  felt  assured  that  the 
girl  would  find  her  way  out  of  her  mental  puzzles 
into  a  straight,  clear-cut  path. 

As  she  went,  she  honored  me  by  a  handshake; 
her  hand,  in  its  black  silk  mitt,  was  in  itself  a  monu- 
ment, and  a  noble  one,  of  American  democracy.  The 
somewhat  bent  fingers,  the  marks  of  toil,  the  un- 
wearied motherhood  of  the  hand  touched  me  deeply. 

I  thought  of  Billions  and  cried  out  to  myself  that 
it  was  not  fair.  She  who  had  striven  so  heroically 
to  create  should  have  been  permitted  to  create  some- 
thing more  in  her  own  likeness,  for  the  stamp  of 
those  who  hold  ideals,  principles  above  all  else,  was 
upon  her.  That  which  is  finest  in  our  American  tra- 
dition was  clearly  visible  in  her,  but  I  could  not  see 
it  in  her  son. 

August  30. 

Dog  day.  Not  Tim's  kind  of  dog,  but  some 
tired  and  discouraged  dog.  Dog-tired.  Bad  weather, 
and  but  little  good  news.  A  damp,  warm,  stagnant 
air  that  in  some  way  changes  the  leathery  smell  of 
my  shop  to  a  disagreeable  odor.  Shoes  are  hard  to 
mend,  lives  are  harder,  and  governments  harder  still. 

All  my  finer  thought  in  regard  to  the  relation  of 
man  to  man,  both  that  which  is  my  own,  and  that 
which  has  come  from  many  days  and  nights  of  read- 


106  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

ing  of  the  great  idealistic  theories  concerning  human 
betterment,  breaks  down.  Excellent  on  paper,  they 
fail  to  make  connection  with  man  as  he  is.  ... 
My  sojourn  in  this  backwater  of  American  democ- 
racy, a  stagnant  New  England  town,  has  undone 
me.  ...  As  yet  I  fail  to  see  how  the  vision  of  the 
thinker  in  his  study  can  be  made  to  square  with  the 
facts  of  human  life  and  human  temperament. 

I  confess  to  days  of  utter  revolt  against  democracy 
and  its  results,  against  the  commonness  of  people, 
their  lying  down  upon  freedom  as  if  it  were  a  feather 
bed  where  one  may  take  one's  ease  endlessly.  At 
times  my  awl  refuses  to  go  straight,  because  it  longs 
to  be  off  pricking  and  waking  up  Mataquoit,  slip- 
pered, lazy  Mataquoit,  gossiping  over  fences,  leaning 
on  hoes,  rocking  on  front  porches  or  back,  standing 
on  street  corners  with  hands  in  pockets,  and  hats 
set  sideways  on  the  back  of  the  head.  The  easy 
chairs  in  this  country  are  too  comfortably  hollowed 
for  a  government  by  the  people ;  freedom,  for  many, 
has  become  a  mere  individual  indulgence;  no  other 
form  of  government  could  have  produced  a  people 
at  once  so  prosperous  and  so  down  at  heel.  Hu- 
manity, perhaps,  needs  a  prod  or  goad  of  misery  to 
make  it  keep  on  wanting  to  progress. 

I  have  moments  of  almost  intolerable  longing  for 
my  own  world  of  caste,  of  special  privilege,  of  in- 
terest in  things  of  the  mind,  of  asceticisms,  denials, 
simplicities,  unworldliness,  if  you  will,  of  hard  fine 
work  of  mind  and  brain.  Tim,  divining  something 
of  my  thought,  reminds  me,  by  a  cold  nose  on  my 
hand,  that  in  that  case,  I  should  never  have  found 
him. 

Then  I  realize  that  this  world  of  my  past  is  as 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  107 

hard  to  relate  to  the  needs  of  modern  democracy  as 
is  unlovely  Mataquoit.  We  were  of  those  who  re- 
ceived all  and  gave  nothing.  There  was  in  that 
narrow  and  sheltered  life  no  perception  of  the  values 
of  democracy,  no  real  admission  of  its  existence.  We 
thought  and  spoke  in  terms  of  the  aristocracies  — 
social,  intellectual,  and  artistic  —  of  the  world. 
Democracy  occupied  the  position  of  a  poor  relation, 
not  mentioned,  standing  outside  the  gates.  - 

Will  this  unrecognized  democracy  come  with  a 
storm  and  a  rush,  sweeping  all  before  her,  with  the 
fury  of  one  scorned?  How  can  we  tame  her  and 
make  her  wise? 

September  1. 

A  month  of  the  third  year  of  the  war  has  gone ; 
Allied  drives  are  under  way  in  the  East,  the  West, 
the  Alps.  The  relief  I  feel  in  the  fact  that  our  side 
has  thus  taken  the  initiative  is  wholly  out  of  pro- 
portion to  any  success  as  yet  won;  no  too  sanguine 
hope  must  be  permitted  after  the  long  months  of 
defeat,  yet  there  is  a  new  freshness,  an  exhilaration 
in  the  air.  I  cannot  help  venturing  a  hope  that  the 
tide  may  be  turning,  may  be  coming  our  way. 

It  is  not,  however,  any  good  fortune  on  the  field 
of  battle  that  should  strengthen  our  resolve ;  rather, 
the  many  disasters  of  the  past  year  should  bring  an 
increasing  sense  of  necessity  that  we  gather  up  the 
loins  of  the  spirit,  fighting  with  mind  and  soul  for 
that  hope  of  a  fairer  working  order  which  we  have 
chosen  to  call  democracy.  I  must  brace  myself  in 
more  determined  fashion  for  that  spiritual  battle  in 
which  I  have  enlisted,  conquering  the  distaste 
which  at  times  I  feel  for  my  task.  The  problem 


108  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

is,  in  many  ways,  overwhelmingly  discouraging  to 
the  looker-on;  it  is  for  the  actor  to  replace  the 
looker-on  and  so  change  the  face  of  the  spectacle. 
We  must  ourselves  create  this  democracy  which  we 
wish  to  find.  Too  little,  perhaps,  have  I  realized 
that  I  am  here  not  merely  to  receive  impressions, 
but  to  make  them.  Not  only  among  my  present 
acquaintances,  who  grow  in  number,  but  in  such 
public  meetings  as  are  open  must  my  voice  be  heard. 
Ever  since  I  came  I  have  been  digging  a  bit  into  the 
theory  and  the  practice  of  the  local  and  the  State 
government,  and  I  have  made  progress. 

I  will  start  an  offensive  of  my  own  on  the  front 
of  Mataquoit. 


XIV 

September  3. 

Went  to  town  meeting  last  night  and  for  the  first 
time  heard  my  fellow  citizens  in  public  debate.  The 
subject  of  the  water  front  was  up  for  consideration, 
and  discussion  grew  heated  as  those  who  had  prop- 
erty to  sell  for  the  proposed  improvement  and  the 
town  officers  wrangled  over  plans  and  terms. 

When  the  dispute  was  at  its  height  a  man  whom  I 
have  not  seen  heretofore  rose  and  in  a  brief  speech, 
a  bit  whimsical,  keen  and  friendly,  set  forth  the 
issue  so  clearly,  suggested  so  definitely  the  right 
course,  that  the  would-be  profiteers  looked  a  bit 
shame-faced  and  intimated  a  willingness  to  modify 
their  terms.  It  was  one  of  the  deftest  bits  of  gen- 
eralship that  I  have  ever  seen,  the  unknown  speaker 
striking  a  higher  civic  note  than  had  been  struck, 
waking,  through  sympathy  and  through  humor,  a 
new,  disinterested  sense  of  the  common  good. 

I  say  "unknown,"  but  I  found  out  after  the  meet- 
ing that  I  am  the  only  person  in  Mataquoit  to  whom 
he  is  unknown.  This  is  our  missing  fellow  towns- 
man, Alexander  Wallace,  back  from  his  vacation  in 
Canada,  a  fine-looking,  genial  personage  of  advanc- 
ing middle  age,  erect  in  bearing,  a  something  sol- 
dierly lingering  there,  for  his  boyhood  saw  service  in 
the  Civil  War.  There  is  a  charm  in  his  manner, 


110  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

coming  largely  from  a  sympathy  one  feels  in  him, 
sounding  in  his  voice,  irradiating  his  whole  person- 
ality. Withal,  there  is  a  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

I  must  make  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Alexander 
Wallace  as  soon  as  may  be. 

September  5. 

Billions,  at  —  I  am  sure  —  the  instigation  of  his 
mother,  invited  me  to  come  to  his  house.  He  showed 
me  the  whole  of  his  princely  estate,  from  the  highest 
Gothic  tower,  looking  over  miles  of  sea,  to  the  elec- 
tric refrigerating  plant  in  the  basement  where  cool 
air  is  manufactured  for  the  preservation  of  his  food. 
A  great  staff  of  men  was  at  work  on  the  grounds; 
another  great  staff  inside.  Lawns,  conservatories, 
corridors,  drawing-rooms,  —  and  old  grandmother 
Brown  wanders  as  one  lost  about  this  costly  wilder- 
ness with  her  knitting,  a  little,  old-fashioned  shawl 
folded  across  her  flat  chest. 

Her  younger  granddaughter,  Clare,  a  fair-haired, 
long-legged  girl,  was  hovering  about  her  with  affec- 
tionate care,  but  Billions  and  his  mother  seemed  to 
be  bodies  separated  by  a  vast  distance,  moving  in 
wholly  different  orbits.  Looking  at  the  two,  I  read 
a  sad  page  in  our  national  history.  The  swift  de- 
velopment of  vast  material  resource  in  our  country 
has  wrought  tragedy  in  many  families,  creating  a 
gap  between  parents  and  children,  as  suddenly 
acquired  wealth  has  thrust  itself  between.  Some- 
thing is  snapped  off;  the  laws  of  normal  growth 
are  broken. 

The  irony  of  Billions'  success!  He  has  succeeded 
only  in  separating  himself  from  the  human  being 
whom  he  probably  cares  most  for,  with  the  excep- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  111 

tion  of  his  daughters  —  and  I  am  not  entirely  sure 
about  the  exception  —  in  all  the  world. 

The  memory  of  this  call  upon  my  old  classmate 
resolves  itself  into  a  panorama  of  polished  wood  and 
gleaming  satins  and  shining  marble.  Against  this 
background  Billions  stands  out,  with  his  many  ser- 
vants, of  whom  he  is  greatly  in  awe,  grouped  about 
him.  There  is  Billions  with  his  butler,  his  English 
butler,  who  tells  him  what  to  do;  Billions  and  his 
gardeners;  Billions  and  his  coachman  and  his  foot- 
men. There  is  also  Billions  with  his  French  chauf- 
feur, who  speeds;  I  fancy  that  Billions  is  afraid  to 
tell  him  to  stop.  Billions  draws  the  line  at  a  valet. 

After  we  had  inspected  all  possible  aspects  of  my 
lord's  magnificence,  a  beverage  reminiscent  of  col- 
lege days  was  served  on  a  verandah  which  extends 
to  the  edge  of  the  rocks.  Under  its  mellowing  in- 
fluence, we  talked  of  old  days  and  new. 

I  could  see  that  he  thought  that,  through  my  own 
Quixotic  folly,  I  was  in  hard  straits,  and  he  made 
fumbling  suggestions  about  helping  me.  This 
touched  me,  and  I  found  it  hard  to  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  let  him  think  I  was  really  in  need.  I  had 
never  liked  Billions  so  well;  so  unexpected  was  his 
sympathy  that  I  was  inclined  to  prey  upon  it. 

As  we  talked  of  past  changes  and  impending 
changes  I  marvelled  that  a  man  whose  life  in  ma- 
terial ways  had  so  greatly  broadened  could  keep  a 
mind  so  narrow.  He  is  puzzled  by  all  suggestion  of 
altered  conditions;  he  considers  those  under  which 
he  made  his  fortune  the  best  possible;  wealth  for 
him  represents  brains  and  character.  His  political 
ideal  is  that  of  the  late  eighteenth  century,  liberty 
of  the  individual  to  forge  ahead  and  do  everything 


112  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

that  means  gain  for  himself  at  whatever  cost  to 
others;  the  thought  of  possibility  of  growth  in  that 
ideal  would  seem  to  him  sacrilege.  A  man's  country 
is  a  something  that  protects  him  from  attacking 
powers;  Billions'  country  has  protected  him,  hence 
he  takes  a  certain  pride  in  it.  America,  in  his 
thought,  has  certain  responsibilities  toward  him ;  he, 
few  or  none  toward  it. 

Like  many  another  wealthy  potentate  in  this 
country,  he  has  his  generosities  and,  in  leisure  mo- 
ments, gives  some  thought  to  the  relief  of  the  ne- 
cessities of  the  poor;  but  the  higher  generosity  of 
helping  on  some  change  of  conditions  that  may 
lessen  his  own  profits  while  giving  his  needy  neigh- 
bor a  chance  has  never  occurred  to  him. 

Is  the  illumination  of  this  darkened  mind  also 
my  job?  Would  that  fate  had  sent  me  as  a  mission- 
ary to  the  Hottentots  rather  than  as  a  prophet  of  a 
higher  civic  law  to  Billions  Brown! 

September  7. 

Of  what  is  happening  in  the  romance  which  I 
have  seen  begun  I  know  but  little;  the  story  moves 
on,  but  I  am  no  teller  of  stories  and  could  not  de- 
scribe, even  if  I  were  a  witness,  the  meetings  be- 
tween Jack  and  Katharine  Brown.  Perhaps,  for 
courtesy,  I  should  write  her  name  first,  but  his  name 
takes  precedence  of  all  others,  I  find,  in  my  thought. 

With  an  evident  growing  seriousness  of  thought 
Jack's  boyish  charm  deepens.  The  gleam  in  his  blue 
eyes  has  as  much  of  humor  as  ever,  but  the  mouth 
has  a  new  look  of  determination.  Once  or  twice, 
after  watching  me  in  silence  for  a  time,  he  has 
started  to  speak,  flushed,  and  said  nothing;  confi- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  113 

dence  is  waiting  me,  I  am  sure,  but  I  must  not  force 
it.  It  is  more  than  the  thought  of  Katharine  that 
fills  his  mind ;  there  is  something  beyond. 

A  reflection  of  the  new  look  of  Jack's  face  is  on 
Katharine's,  both  the  softer  look  in  the  eyes  and 
the  sterner  expression  about  the  mouth.  Whether 
there  is  trouble  at  the  great  house  in  the  matter  of 
their  friendship  I  do  not  know,  but  I  judge,  partly 
from  a  half-apprehensive  shadow  flitting  across 
Katharine's  face  at  the  mention  of  Jack's  name  on 
the  day  of  my  call,  that  this  is  the  case. 

What  supreme  folly !  Of  all  the  foolish  social  pre- 
tensions that  I  have  ever  seen,  and  I  have  seen 
many,  the  most  foolish  is  the  pretence  of  social  ex- 
clusiveness  on  the  part  of  Billions  Brown. 

I  know  from  the  tilt  of  old  Grandmother  Brown's 
bonnet  that  she  is  on  the  side  of  the  angels,  and 
that  she  is  having  difficulty.  I  saw  her  to-day  out 
in  Jack's  runabout,  defiantly  chaperoning  her  grand- 
daughter on  a  drive.  And  I  know  full  well  what 
terror  must  have  possessed  her,  for  automobiles 
must  be  fearsome  things  to  her,  and  Jack  will  speed. 

Meanwhile,  I  have  my  unshared  moments  and  my 
lonely  hours.  Jack's  early  sympathetic  curiosity  in 
regard  to  me,  his  interest  in  my  work,  have  vanished. 
The  wakening  affection  he  had  for  me  is  still  there, 
I  think,  but  is  in  abeyance.  He  is  completely  ab- 
sorbed in  the  thought  of  this  young  girl,  watching 
for  a  glimpse  of  her,  sitting  absent-mindedly  by  the 
window,  waiting  for  her  to  drive  past. 

I  am  beginning  to  realize  dimly  the  challenge  of 
the  years.  It  comes  now  when,  at  moments,  I  feel 
a  bit  old  and  tired  and  wistful  for  the  voices  that 
used  to  speak  my  first  name.  As  all  that  draws  in 


114  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

outward  ways,  the  affection  of  others  dims  and 
lessens;  as  one  learns  not  to  ask  the  love  once  poured 
out  so  plentifully,  one  realizes  more  fully  the  stern 
opportunity  of  life,  the  chance  to  give  all,  asking 
nothing.  The  supreme  test  comes  at  the  moment 
when  you  begin  to  know  that  all  you  cling  to  slips  — 
things,  people,  experiences,  work,  achievements  —  at 
that  moment  which  says:  "You  must  let  go." 
Surely,  as  one  moves  down  these  later  years,  striving 
more  and  more  to  "love  without  the  help  of  anything 
on  earth,"  one  more  and  more  believes  in  the  greater 
Love,  giving  all,  demanding  nothing.  Perhaps  one 
is  even  able  to  fashion  one's  small  remnant  of  life 
in  the  light  of  it. 

Now  to  my  unfinished  boots,  and  my  forever  un- 
finished task  of  loving  my  neighbor  as  myself. 

September  8. 

No  customer  to-day.  I  shut  my  door  and  cobbled 
shoes,  somewhat  diminishing  the  row  against  the 
wall,  waiting  for  the  stitches  that  will  enable  them  to 
walk  away  and  start  again  upon  the  human  high- 
road. I  had  much  troubled  thinking,  as  well  as 
difficult  cobbling  to  do;  the  country  is  shaken  from 
end  to  end  by  a  great  impending  railway  strike, 
which  comes,  cutting  like  an  ugly  threat,  across  my 
slow-growing  hope  for  a  more  unified  Americanism 
in  this  country. 

My  day  was  spent  in  the  heart  of  this  long  and 
wearying  labor  and  capital  struggle,  old  lines  of 
thought  and  earlier  investigations  converging  here, 
with  present  apprehension.  This  is  a  problem 
toward  which  I  have  directed  much  mental  energy 
in  the  past,  but  in  a  remote,  theoretical  way,  as  one 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  115 

casually  interested  in  economic  questions.  I  am 
conscious  in  myself  of  a  new  attitude,  of  deep  per- 
sonal concern,  a  fresh  sense  of  the  individual  re- 
sponsibility of  every  citizen  to  work  toward  har- 
monious adjustment  of  troubles  here.  This  thunder 
of  battle  which  shakes  the  earth  has  stirred  within 
many  of  us  depths  of  human  feeling  of  which  we 
were  unaware. 

No  less,  this  threatened  civil  war  at  a  moment 
of  great  crisis  is  thrown  into  high  relief  by  the  con- 
flagration which  is  consuming  the  world.  I  have 
keen  sympathy  with  real  sufferers  in  the  world  of 
workers,  but  I  admit  that  suffering  labor  is  not  the 
labor  that  is  most  in  evidence  to-day.  It  is  a  cruel 
thing  that  a  vast  number  of  American  citizens  are 
choosing  to  be  less  than  citizens,  are  willing,  appar- 
ently, in  cold  blood,  to  tie  up  transportation  the 
country  over,  inevitably  bringing  distress  and  death 
to  many  of  their  fellow  citizens ;  this  modern  slogan 
of  money  and  still  more  money  for  oneself  is  alarm- 
ingly replacing  the  old  victory  or  death,  for  one's 
country.  There  was  no  cry  of  time  and  a  half  for 
over- time  in  76!  Where  is  the  earlier  sense  of 
common  citizenship,  the  sense  of  loyalty  to  the  land 
of  one's  birth  and  all  who  dwell  within  it?  Equally 
cruel  has  been  the  selfish  following  of  individual 
interest  in  great  enterprises,  with  no  thought  of 
civic  responsibility,  which  is  largely  responsible  for 
the  present  lamentable  state  of  things;  the  dragon's 
teeth  have  been  thickly  sown  and  are  springing  up 
in  abundant  harvest.  Where  have  we  fallen  short, 
we,  whose  ancestors  started  out  with  so  fair  a  hope 
of  justice,  of  equality,  of  opportunity  for  all?  Of 
the  fact  that  we  have  failed,  the  present  crisis  is 


116  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

abundant  proof;  we  have  indeed  split  up  into  the 
masses  and  the  classes.  What  other  result  could 
have  followed  from  the  attitude  that  I  and  mine 
have  taken,  from  the  exploiting  of  the  people  that 
Billions  Brown  and  his  kind  have  done?  Those  who, 
having  power  to  guide,  have  failed  to  guide,  intel- 
lectually and  spiritually,  are  guilty,  even  as  those 
who  have  shown  practical  greed,  and  should  be  ar- 
rested, if  not  by  the  United  States  government,  at 
least  by  then1  own  consciences,  as  fomenters  of 
strikes. 

It  is  distasteful  to  me  to  agree  with  Billions  in 
regard  to  any  economic  matter,  yet  I  find  myself  in 
accord  with  him  in  condemning  this  strike.  My 
reasons,  however,  are  different  from  his;  he  is  in  a 
high  financier's  fury  about  it  because  of  the  jolt  it 
gives  to  commerce;  I  am  thinking  of  two  things: 

First:  The  waning  of  the  old  sense  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  agreements.  Surely  this  is  the  most  alarm- 
ing symptom  of  our  national  disgrace,  this  lack  of 
grasp  of  abiding  principles,  set  high  above  the 
thought  of  gain  or  loss,  to  be  held  through  evil  for- 
tune and  through  good.  Is  it  not  true  that,  in  a 
recent  struggle,  the  railway  men  accepted  arbitra- 
tion as  a  principle  to  rule  in  disputes  between  man- 
agement and  men?  Now,  arbitration  is  refused 
because  of  a  chance  for  greater  gain.  The  basic  foun- 
dations of  all  abiding  government  are  threatened  by 
such  opportunism. 

Second:  This  placing  of  money  wage  above  all 
other  considerations ;  this  new  ethics  of  holding  man 
largely  excused  for  stealing,  or  working  girl  for  losing 
her  honor,  because  the  purse  is  thin,  of  excusing 
labor  for  exercising  its  strangle  hold  upon  the  human 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  117 

throat,  is  a  mark  of  decadence,  of  a  loss  of  distinc- 
tions fundamental  to  the  moral  well-being  of  a 
people.  Honor  and  coin  are  not  interchangeable 
barter. 

It  is  small  consolation  that  thinking  men  say  in 
regard  to  labor's  cry  of  wage  and  yet  more  wage  at 
any  cost:  "What  can  you  expect?  The  money- 
getting  of  the  old  order  naturally  repeats  itself 
here."  Yet  I  question,  letting  my  mind  turn  back 
through  what  is  known  of  progress  in  ages  past,  and 
forward,  through  what  it  hopes,  to  future  years. 
There  is  hardly  a  doubt  that  a  momentous  change 
is  coming  and  is  very  near,  —  the  triumph  of  the 
workers  the  world  over.  It  is  sad  that  they  have 
not  set  their  hopes  above  those  of  their  predecessors ; 
the  hard  years  of  denial  and  of  discipline  should 
have  borne  better  spiritual  fruit.  If  the  financiers 
of  the  past  have  kept  their  eyes  upon  their  money 
bags,  should  these  same  money  bags  limit  the  vision 
of  the  men  of  the  future?  Growth,  the  new  order, 
should  mean  something  finer  and  higher,  dispos- 
sessing the  old  by  its  beauty,  if  it  dispossesses  it  at 
all.  Unless  this  be  true,  unless  change  means  funda- 
mentally a  far  greater  inner  beauty,  it  means 
decadence. 

The  crying  need  of  American  life,  especially  the 
crying  need  of  labor,  coming  into  power,  is  a  higher 
motive. 

September  9. 

This  afternoon  I  had  the  honor  of  a  second  visit 
from  Billions  Brown.  I  fancy  he  came  partly  be- 
cause he  likes  to  hear  his  old  college  nickname,  and 
that  not  because  of  its  prophetic  suggestion,  but  be- 


118  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

cause  it  belonged  to  his  youth.  For,  in  gaining  the 
whole  world,  he  has  lost  his  youth. 

His  manner  to  me  is  an  odd  combination  of  a  half- 
fearful  admiration  and  a  half-respectful  contempt. 
His  old  feeling  in  regard  to  me,  reenf orced  by  Grand- 
mother Brown's  approval,  struggles  with  the  disdain 
of  an  over-successful  man  for  a  man  whom  he  con- 
siders a  failure. 

Our  talk  about  our  boyhood  led  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  present  generation  of  youth,  and  Billions, 
with  some  hesitation,  perhaps  remembering  in  what 
unsparing  terms  he  had  ordered  me  not  to  talk  with 
his  daughter,  confided  to  me  that  he  is  greatly  puz- 
zled about  Katharine.  With  an  astonishment  that 
left  him  breathless  he  told  of  his  recent  discovery 
that  she  rebelled  against  the  present  conditions  of 
her  luxurious  life  and  envied  girls  who  had  to  earn 
their  own  living.  Talking  with  him  to-day,  she  had 
actually  cried  about  it,  he  said,  though  he  had 
hardly  seen  her  shed  a  tear  since  she  had  grown  up. 
She  envied  his  stenographer  her  busy  hours  and  her 
independence ;  she  envied  the  farmer's  daughter  who 
supplied  the  village  store  with  strawberries;  she  is 
ashamed  to  be  rich. 

Billions'  mind  was  all  in  a  maze  when  he  told 
me  this,  sitting  in  my  armchair  and  keeping  his 
questioning  eyes  upon  me  as  I  worked.  You  would 
think  that  Katharine  would  be  as  happy  as  the  day 
is  long,  he  said  wistfully,  with  nothing  to  do,  and 
nothing  left  that  she  could  ask  for.  When  he  said 
this  I  could  not  help  wondering  at  what  point  in 
the  dizzying  ascent  of  his  career  the  country  boy 
had  dropped  his  common  sense.  Any  one  should 
see,  I  reflected,  that  the  strength,  the  practical 


A   WORLD    TO   MEND  119 

power  of  her  forbears  was  chafing  within  her,  with 
nothing  to  exercise  itself  upon.  The  cumulative 
energy  of  generations  of  hard-working  folk  was 
brought  to  a  sudden  standstill;  what  wonder  that 
the  dammed-up  powers  fretted  behind  the  barriers, 
trying  to  beat  a  way  out? 

Billions  went  sadly  away  when  he  had  told  me 
his  dilemma;  Katharine's  discontent  was  his  failure. 
I  could  see  that  she  had  been,  since  her  babyhood, 
the  chief  treasure  of  his  heart,  partly,  doubtless,  be- 
cause of  her  likeness  in  look  and  in  character  to  his 
mother.  If  she  did  not  find  satisfaction  in  his  castle, 
his  wide  demesne,  his  army  of  servants  and  all  his 
splendor,  of  what  avail  was  his  success? 

After  he  had  gone  I  thought  long  about  our 
American  habit,  at  least  in  the  wealthier  homes, 
and  certainly  also  in  the  homes  of  some  of  the  less 
wealthy,  of  bringing  up  the  daughters  of  democracy 
as  if  they  were  daughters  of  princely  houses  in 
Europe.  Our  system  is  even  worse  than  that  of  the 
old  countries  where  something  of  feudal  custom  still 
lingers.  For  there,  in  the  houses  of  the  great  and 
titled,  daughters  are  taught  to  serve,  to  feel  a  re- 
sponsibility for  those  beneath  them,  privilege  con- 
ferring duty  as  if  it  were  an  order.  Noblesse  oblige, 
but  there  is  no  oblige  about  middle-class  American 
ideals  hi  regard  to  daughters. 

I  was  greatly  relieved  that  Billions  had  nothing 
to  say  about  Jack. 


XV 


September  10. 

There  is  a  softness  in  the  air  to-day,  a  gentleness 
such  as  one  meets  only  at  the  shore;  the  golden 
light  of  early  fall  is  in  the  air  and  on  all  growing 
things.  Perhaps  the  look  of  sky  and  earth  and  sea 
has  something  to  do  with  the  feeling  I  have  that 
this  is  indeed  the  spot  for  which  I  was  looking  in 
order  to  exercise  my  craft.  In  spite  of  all  perplex- 
ities, of  the  many  difficulties  in  thinking  out  human 
problems  in  the  light  of  actual  human  personalities, 
I  am  glad  that  I  came  to  Mataquoit.  Much  that 
I  have  read  and  studied  in  the  past  of  social  and 
political  theory  takes  on  concrete  form,  gains  new 
interest  in  the  light  of  my  present  deepening  knowl- 
edge of  human  beings. 

The  human  comradeship  which  I  have  found  here 
more  than  compensates  me  for  all  my  toil.  Children 
greet  me  shyly  on  the  street;  my  friend,  the  police- 
man, forecasts  the  weather;  Jack  puts  his  head 
through  the  door  to  chaff  me: 

"Now,  Socrates,  shall  we  have  a  little  set-to  about 
the  duties  of  a  citizen  in  a  republic." 

My  growing  absorption  in  Jack  and  Katharine 
makes  me  wonder  sometimes  how  I  can  keep  my 
interest  toward  my  fellow  creatures  in  general,  how 
keep  my  impersonal  quest?  I  find  deep  satisfaction 
in  watching  these  two,  and  in  sharing,  through  an 
understanding  that  is  almost  startling  to  myself, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  121 

their  new  life.  A  look  on  Jack's  face,  his  step  —  I 
am  interested  in  seeing  how  expressive  people's  feet 
have  become  to  me  since  I  made  them  my  profession 
—  his  whistle,  a  glance  that  passes  between  the  two, 
a  glance  withheld,  tells  more  than  I  have  any  right 
to  know.  This  growing  older  has  its  compensations ; 
one  is,  as  it  were,  disembodied  bit  by  bit;  the  wall 
of  flesh  breaks  down;  one  becomes  more  keenly 
aware  of  other  souls  and  what  goes  on  in  them. 

I  have  seen  Jack  and  Katharine  several  times 
walking  together;  once  I  caught  sight  of  them  out 
on  the  bridge  over  the  tidal  river ;  once  on  the  green 
head  of  the  gray  granite  cliff,  looking  out  over  the 
sea.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  faces  of  both  wear  the 
look  that  the  twigs  wear  in  early  spring. 

At  each  glimpse  I  get  of  them  together,  my 
grumbling  in  regard  to  the  upbringing  of  this  gen- 
eration subsides.  One  can  but  marvel  at  the  im- 
perishable stuff  of  which  youth  is  made  that  they, 
whose  parents  have  done  their  best  to  spoil  them, 
are  still  unspoiled.  I  glory  in  these  two  who  have 
so  flowered  in  this  free  air  of  liberty;  fresh  winds 
seem  to  follow  them  wherever  they  go;  they  move 
like  young  gods  in  pure  air.  Yet  they  are  but  two 
young  human  beings,  practical,  clean-cut,  white- 
shod. 

The  white  feet  of  the  young  go  shining  through 
these  days,  and  on  the  endless  way.  It  is  but  a 
case  of  canvas  shoes,  but  they  are  a  symbol. 

September  12. 

I  have  had  a  call  from  Alexander  Wallace,  who 
not  only  came  but  spent  an  evening  with  me  before 
the  fire  hi  my  shop,  for  the  sea  air  was  chilly.  Twice 


122  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

lately  I  have  encountered  him,  once  at  the  hut  of 
old  Mrs.  Mooney,  to  whom  I  had  gone  to  take  a 
much-needed  gift  of  shoes,  and  once  at  the  palace 
of  Billions  Brown.  I  fancy  he  is  the  only  inhabi- 
tant of  Mataquoit  who  has  both  these  places  on  his 
visiting  list. 

He  came  in  with  a  half-smiling  seriousness,  saying 
that  he  had  wanted  to  look  me  up ;  that  he  was  the 
busybody  of  the  town,  who  always  took  care  of 
newcomers.  As  he  talked  of  Mataquoit  and  its  in- 
habitants, the  town  came  alive  for  me  as  it  had  not 
been  before.  Much  of  its  civic  history,  during  the 
days  that  he  had  known  it,  became  as  real  as  a 
drama  played  before  my  eyes.  Its  struggles,  dis- 
putes, town  meetings,  its  selectmen's  discussions,  its 
New  England  way  of  half  accepting  and  half  shirk- 
ing its  responsibilities  were  set  forth  with  a  graphic 
touch  that  made  me  feel  as  if  I  had  taken  part 
therein. 

As  my  guest  talked  on  I  became  aware  in  him  of 
a  new  attitude,  something  which  I  have  never 
encountered  in  the  world  in  which  I  have  lived  here- 
tofore, nor,  as  yet,  in  Mataquoit,  a  sense  of  citizen- 
ship as  a  first  concern;  he  is  on  guard,  always 
waiting;  no  government  automatically  releases  him 
from  his  individual  responsibility.  He  gives  disci- 
plined, instant  obedience  when  ordered  into  action, 
and  the  order  comes  always  from  within. 

Listening,  I  said  to  myself,  "God  has  sent  me  a 
citizen  for  my  encouragement."  The  thought  came 
warmly  into  my  mind,  and  Tim  wagged  his  tail  in 
response  to  it,  as  is  often  the  case.  He  has  a  way 
of  wagging  an  accompaniment  to  any  especially 
friendly  thought  of  mine  toward  any  one. 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  123 

My  guest  spoke  of  himself  laughingly,  stretching 
out  his  feet  toward  the  fire,  as  the  man  who  had  no 
slippers.  There  was  never  an  evening,  or  rarely  one, 
when  he  could  sit  by  the  fire  and  toast  his  toes, 
for  there  was  always  something,  going  on,  in  church, 
town  hall,  or  neighbor's  house  in  which  he  had  to 
help,  or  some  lonely  person  on  whom  he  had  to  call. 

I  watched  him  by  the  light  of  the  leaping  flame. 
That  winning,  whimsical,  sympathetic  smile;  the 
keen,  yet  tender  eyes,  that  miss  no  shade  of  human 
peculiarity,  that  subordination  of  all  thought  of  self 
and  of  individual  concern,  letting  every  man's  in- 
terests come  before  his  own,  —  I  had  to  rub  my 
eyes  a  bit  to  see  if  I  was  making  him  up,  for  it 
seemed  almost  as  if  he  might  be  a  figment  of  the 
imagination,  created  to  meet  the  need  of  Mataquoit 
or  of  America.  If,  peradventure,  I  said  to  myself, 
out  of  one  hundred  and  ten  millions,  one  in  ten 
thousand  could  be  like  this  man,  the  country  would 
be  saved. 

Matters  seem  looking  up  in  the  world,  with  better 
news  from  the  western  front,  with  Jack,  and  Wallace, 
and  Grandmother  Brown  in  Mataquoit. 

September  15. 

I  have  dined  with  Billions  and  his  family.  Doubt- 
less he  invited  me  because  he  did  not  dare  to  do 
otherwise  with  his  mother  there;  it  was  plain  that 
she  had  insisted. 

I  doubt  if  any  social  occasion  was  ever  more  per- 
plexing. Billions  was  sulky  and  wore,  under  his  ac- 
quired, great  financier  manner,  an  amusing  air  of  a 
big  boy  being  made  to  do  something  he  does  not 
want  to  do.  In  a  way  I  think  he  was  glad  to  see 


124  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

me,  but  the  hopeless  confusion  in  regard  to  social 
relations  which  my  coming  would  rouse  in  the  minds 
of  his  servants  staggered  him.  There  are  evidently 
no  rules  in  his  book  of  etiquette  for  a  situation  so 
complex.  And  I,  when  I  fathomed  my  state  of  mind 
to  the  bottom,  found  remnants  of  my  old  feeling  of 
a  slight  condescension  on  my  part  in  dining  with 
Billions. 

The  butler  was  a  study;  to  him  the  presence  of 
the  village  cobbler  was  an  outrage.  He  was  used  to 
Billions  and  his  monstrous  ways  —  such  were  Ameri- 
can millionaires  —  but  the  cobbler !  He  might  have 
mutinied  but  for  the  commanding  eye  of  old  Mrs. 
Brown ;  there  was  never  an  instant's  departure  from 
respectful  obedience  when  that  was  upon  him. 

The  old  lady  was  absolutely  unafraid  of  Billions 
in  all  his  glory,  and  his  entire  staff,  the  collected 
inmates  of  the  huge  servants'  quarters,  could  not 
daunt  her.  Her  rebuke  to  the  butler  because  he 
failed  to  produce  the  baked  potato  and  creamed  beef 
which  were  her  very  sensible  substitute  for  the 
over-luxurious  dinner  that  was  served  furnished 
comedy  refreshment  of  a  high  type.  Evidently  the 
chef  was  put  through  his  paces  to  suit  her ;  his  bread 
was  never  light  enough,  she  told  me,  nor  could  he 
make  raised  biscuit  to  meet  her  standards. 

The  butler  received  his  discipline  with  a  meek- 
ness which  surprised  me,  and  which  he  did  not  show 
to  any  one  else,  for  he  was  a  bit  haughty  with 
Billions.  Perhaps  he  remembered  another  white 
kerchief,  somewhere  in  England,  folded  this  way. 

In  a  quite  surprising  way  Mrs.  Brown  dominated 
the  conversation,  to  the  evident  amusement  of  the 
two  girls,  Katharine  and  Clare,  who  twinkled  at 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  125 

each  other  now  and  then  over  their  grandmother's 
reminiscences.  She  told  us  about  Billions'  joy  in 
his  first  pair  of  "bough ten"  shoes;  about  the  ready- 
made  suit  which  was  purchased  for  him  when  he 
was  fifteen,  the  first  suit  not  made  over  from  his 
father's  clothing;  it  was  a  fine  shepherd's  plaid. 

I  could  almost  swear  that  the  butler  winked  at 
Grandmother  Brown  when  she  told  how  Billions  did 
three  days'  hard  work  in  the  hay  field  to  get  money 
enough  to  go  to  Barnum's  circus.  She  was  fond  and 
proud  of  Billions,  but  apparently  realized  that  he 
needed  "taking  down,"  and,  though  she  did  her  task 
over-thoroughly,  making  him  wince  now  and  then, 
she  showed  fundamental  good  taste  in  not  wanting 
the  humble  origin  concealed.  I  am  sure  that  the 
butler,  whose  good  taste  was  impeccable,  recognized 
this ;  he  showed  her  greater  deference  that  he  showed 
any  one  else. 

Billions'  energetic  face  had  become  a  mask,  out 
of  which  looked  the  same  bright  eyes  which  I  re- 
membered from  long  ago.  They  were  hopeful  and 
determined  then;  now,  somewhat  different  in  ex- 
pression, wary,  watching  to  see  if  he  were  doing 
things  right.  He  kept  his  eye  on  the  butler  as  if 
alert  for  signals ;  the  butler  has  evidently  given  much 
time  and  thought  to  the  education  of  his  master. 

Doubtless  we  were  all  glad  when  the  last  course 
was  over.  As  Billions  ushered  me  to  a  far  corner 
of  the  verandah  and  offered  me  the  choicest  cigar  I 
had  seen  for  many  a  month,  I  saw  the  slender  young 
girl  Clare,  in  her  filmy,  spangled  blue  gown  and 
dainty  slippers,  grasp  Mrs.  Brown's  hands  and  dance 
about  her,  crying  out:  "Granny,  you  are  a  darling!" 
Katharine  smiled  demurely,  and  I  forthwith  con- 


126  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

eluded  that  the  old  lady's  conversation  had  given 
pleasure  to  her  granddaughters. 

That  evening  gave  me  a  new  insight  into  my 
host's  life  and  its  difficulties.  Poor  Billions!  His 
days  and  nights  are  one  long  study  of  how  to  spend 
more  money.  When  he  plans  some  pleasure,  a 
yachting  trip  or  a  long  motor  journey,  he  has  to 
stop  to  consider  how  to  make  it  more  expensive. 
Even  in  going  on  a  simple  journey  to  Washington 
or  Philadelphia,  for  instance,  he  has  to  put  his  whole 
mind  on  the  problem  of  a  maximum  of  outfit  for  a 
minimum  of  result;  so  with  his  furnishings  and  his 
landscape  gardening;  nothing  else  would  befit  his 
dignity. 

He  ponders  over  schemes  for  excessive  philan- 
thropies and  is  evidently  giving  away  his  money  in 
large  and  abstract  fashion,  yet  he  finds  himself  no 
nearer  his  kind  for  all  his  huge  checks.  His  gener- 
osity springs  largely  from  his  realization  that  the 
tide  has  turned  against  multimillionaires  and  toward 
those  who  are  working  for  human  welfare;  Billions 
wishes,  above  all  things,  to  do  what  is  being  done. 

As  he  talked  of  his  past  activities  and  of  his  plans 
for  the  future,  I  realized  afresh  his  power.  If  he 
could  have  given  his  ability,  his  genius  for  organiza- 
tion, to  the  making  of  his  country,  what  vast  results 
there  might  have  been!  Here  is  another  of  the 
many  instances  of  the  best  mental  energy  of  the 
land,  during  the  last  decades,  being  drawn  into  ma- 
terial production,  when  it  should  have  been  drawn, 
at  least  a  large  share  of  it,  into  intellectual  and 
spiritual  production,  into  study  of  civic  need,  into 
statesmanship.  There  has  been  vast  business  ex- 
pansion, but  alas!  what  needs  expansion  is  America's 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  127 

mind,  America's  character,  America's  institutions. 
The  solving  of  the  problems  of  human  adjustment, 
of  the  reconcilement  of  will  to  will,  is  vastly  more 
important  than  working  out  the  best  way  to  treat 
pig  iron,  or  to  refine  crude  oil. 

Grandmother  Brown  had  gone  to  bed  before  I 
came  away,  but  Katharine  was  waiting,  a  slender 
maiden  athlete,  at  the  top  of  the  stone  steps  leading 
to  the  driveway  to  give  me  a  firm  handclasp,  and  to 
tell  me,  with  evident  sincerity,  that  it  had  been  a 
pleasure  to  her  to  see  me  in  her  home.  Her  eyes, 
which,  when  I  first  saw  her,  were  too  patient  for  the 
eyes  of  a  girl,  were  kindled  and  alive  with  leaping 
flame. 

September  17. 

I  met  Mrs.  Sands  on  the  street  to-day,  a  suave 
and  cordial  Mrs.  Sands,  with  a  changed  face.  It 
was  most  surprising  to  see  her  outstretched  hand  and 
to  listen  to  a  gracious  inquiry  about  my  health  and 
about  my  business.  Jack  had  grown  so  attached  to 
me,  she  said,  that  she  could  not  help  feeling  deeply 
interested  in  me,  and  then,  with  becoming  feminine 
deference,  she  asked  if  I  could  tell  her  where  to 
find  information  about  strikes  in  America  during 
the  last  four  or  five  years. 

She  left  me  wholly  bewildered  by  this  change  of 
front,  until  it  dawned  upon  me  that  she  is  aware  of 
Jack's  feeling  in  regard  to  Katharine  Brown  and  has 
heard  that,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  the  Cobbler 
is  a  friend  of  the  Browns  and  has  even  dined  with 
them.  The  realization  of  this  brought  me  one  of 
my  old  attacks  of  disbelief  in  humanity;  what  can 
be  achieved  in  a  country  honeycombed  by  this  kind 


128  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  vulgar  and  snobbish  ambition?  There  is  Billions, 
hovering  on  the  edge  of  the  great  world,  and  Mrs. 
Sands,  hovering  on  the  edge  of  Billions,  his  greater 
wealth  the  only  barrier  between  them.  The  thought 
of  what  was  in  Mrs.  Sands'  mind  as  she  went  on 
down  the  street,  her  heels  higher  than  ever,  so  that 
she  seemed  to  be  walking  on  tiptoe  with  hope, 
almost  tarnished  the  thought  which  is  often  in  my 
mind  concerning  Jack  and  Katharine. 

Her  sense  of  false  values  in  regard  to  this  matter 
recalled  to  me  vividly  her  sense  of  false  values  in 
the  matter  of  training  her  son  for  the  struggle  of 
life,  and  this,  with  bad  news  from  the  front  and  a 
chance  encounter  with  my  two  young  friends  on  the 
beach,  threw  me  into  a  state  of  mind  in  which  I 
forgot  my  promise  to  Mrs.  Sands  not  to  try  to  in- 
fluence her  son  with  reference  to  present  issues.  I 
regret  that  I  broke  my  promise,  but  here  were  my 
two,  full  of  strength  and  hope  and  promise,  both, 
thank  God,  incomparably  better  than  their  training, 
discussing  the  question  of  neutrality  in  the  war. 
Hiram  Banks,  our  Congressman,  had  declared  him- 
self a  neutral  and  had  counseled  Jack,  who  had 
spoken  out  hotly  for  the  Allies,  to  follow  in  his 
footsteps. 

Then  I  forgot  myself  and  told  my  young  friends 
with  some  vehemence  that,  in  ethical  questions, 
there  can  be  no  neutrality.  Belgium,  or  the  Lusi- 
tania  alone,  sufficed  as  ground  for  decision,  as  did 
many  another  German  deed.  Or,  if  I  had  but  the 
one  fact  to  guide  me,  that  the  English  and  the 
French  are  led  by  their  officers,  that  the  Germans 
are  driven  forward  by  officers  with  drawn  revolvers, 
I  should  know  on  which  side  to  range  myself.  The 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  129 

whole  story  is  in  this:  one  must  join  that  party  in 
the  long  warfare  which  shows  the  most  essential 
respect  for  human  beings,  for  in  such  respect  lies 
the  key  to  the  future. 

Life  is  a  battle,  I  told  them,  bound  to  be,  from 
first  to  last,  a  fight.  We  are  happy  when  we  can  fight 
only  evil  tendencies  in  ourselves  and  things  that  all 
men  would  recognize  as  wrong.  When  a  great  mo- 
ment comes,  and  the  world  has  arrayed  itself  in 
fighting  camps,  make  your  decision,  fight  on  the 
side  which  has  more  of  right,  for  you  have  got  to 
fight  with  one  or  the  other.  Fighting,  fighting, 
fighting,  leave  your  body  by  the  wall,  if  necessary. 

Then,  after  I  had  left  them,  I  had  a  strong  re- 
action. Why  should  I  harangue  the  young?  Why 
not  myself,  for  shunting  off  the  burden  of  life  upon 
them?  Because  I  have  failed  shall  I  make  them  live 
in  my  place? 

Yes. 

As  they  walked  on,  with  the  blue  sea  for  a  back- 
ground, the  sense  was  fresh  within  me  of  this  flower 
of  human  love,  springing  eternally  on  the  edge  of 
that  awful  chasm,  —  the  enormous  tragedy  of 
human  life,  made  more  apparent  for  the  moment 
by  the  war,  but  always  tragedy. 

My  feeling  toward  both  of  them  is  strong.  I  have 
grown  fond  of  Katharine  too,  and  I  admire  her 
greatly,  but  with  her  I  have  no  such  sense  of  near- 
ness as  I  have  with  Jack.  I  and  he,  —  there  is  a 
kind  of  identity  there.  Sometimes  it  seems  as  if  in 
him  I  met  my  youth  walking,  fresh  and  unspoiled, 
and  could  in  him  live  my  life  again  and  live  it  aright ; 
sometimes  he  seems  my  old  prayers  made  visible. 

Katharine  is  ardent,  vehement,  almost  over-ener- 


130  A   WORLD   TO  MEND 

getic,  her  nature,  I  can  see,  a  complement  to  Jack's. 
He  is  slower,  sunnier,  less  impassioned,  and  possibly 
steadier  when  roused.  He  has  not  been  repressed  by 
a  conventional  system  of  training,  as  she  has;  there 
is  in  him  less  pent-up  electric  force,  waiting  for  its 
outlet.  The  best  that  is  in  him  will  be  stung  to 
life  by  her,  and  together  — 

They  became  mere  specks,  far  down  the  yellow 
sand;  I  watched  them  as  long  as  the  eye  could  see, 
thinking,  with  a  sense  of  hope  for  the  future,  for  I 
could  not  forget  the  glimpse  I  had  had  of  the  two 
on  that  day  in  the  library,  that  there  was  here  some- 
thing greater  than  in  most  romances,  a  burning  with 
one  pure  flame  of  patriotism,  of  desire  for  service, 
a  something  that  makes  them  greater  than  them- 
selves. 


XVI 

September  20. 

My  business  flourishes,  perhaps  at  the  expense  of 
my  constructive  thought  in  regard  to  democracy, 
though  I  must  not  let  this  be.  This  week  I  have 
patched  a  pair  of  calfskin  boots  for  a  farmer  who 
lives  half  a  mile  out;  I  have  resoled  two  pairs  of 
boys'  shoes  and  mended  rips  in  three  pairs  of  girls' 
shoes.  The  latter  I  like  least  of  all;  there  is  some- 
thing flimsy  and  unsubstantial  in  the  footwear  of 
womankind  in  this  region,  and  I  dislike  the  sym- 
bolism. I  have  mended  a  pair  of  infants'  slippers, 
but  very  badly.  Did  they  think  that  I  had  Cin- 
derella's fingers  when  they  brought  me  those?  Most 
interesting  of  all,  I  have  put  stitches  in  the  soles 
of  a  pair  of  prunella  gaiters,  yes,  prunella  gaiters, 
belonging  to  old  lady  Simms,  who  lives  in  the  tiny 
colonial  house  on  the  hill  with  the  great  horse- 
chestnut  trees  around  it.  She  had  darned  the  holes 
in  the  sides  herself  with  black  linen.  Into  what  aw- 
ful era  have  these  reminders  of  far-distant,  sunny 
days  of  peace  lived  on! 

September  24. 

My  insight  into  the  predicament  of  Billions  in 
all  his  glory  grows  with  each  visit  I  make  to  the 
great  house,  each  conversation  I  have  with  any  of 
its  inmates. 

In  his  desire  to  do  himself  well  he  has  overdone  the 


132  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

matter  in  every  way  possible.  He  purchased  so 
much  of  the  Maine  coast  for  his  summer  estate  that 
he  has  no  near  neighbors;  he  is  a  solitary  sphere, 
revolving  all  alone  in  a  vast  and  empty  universe. 
I  am  no  astronomer,  but  I  know  that  this  cannot 
be  done ;  all  Billions'  magnificent  isolation  is  a  con- 
tradiction of  cosmic  law. 

It  would  be  an  interesting  idea  for  a  novel  in  the 
earlier  manner  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  the  story  of  a 
piece  of  matter  that  had  broken  from  all  laws  of 
attraction  and  gravitation  and  was  running  wild  in 
the  universe;  Billions  we  must  look  upon  as  an 
unruly  comet,  hoping  that  he  will  eventually  be 
brought  out  of  his  individual  orbit  and  drawn  into 
obedience  to  the  common  law. 

Loneliness  strikes  me  as  the  note  of  every  indi- 
vidual existence  in  that  house.  Katharine  has  part 
in  the  life  of  a  fashionable  shore  colony  a  few  miles 
farther  on,  but  I  doubt  if  she  cares  for  it.  The 
younger  sister  Clare  evidently  shares  some  of  the 
sports  of  the  same  set.  But  none  of  this  comes  to 
Billions.  From  hints  that  he  drops  I  gather  that, 
lost  among  the  rich  of  the  city,  he  had  rather  relied 
on  the  summers  for  social  recognition  and  inter- 
course, and  the  summers  have  failed  him.  There  are 
none  here  who  speak  his  language  or  think  his 
thoughts.  He  is  as  solitary,  almost,  within  his  high 
walls  as  a  convict ;  there  he  is,  immured  in  his  riches, 
sentenced  for  life,  without  even  the  relief  of  hard 
labor. 

Nowhere  else  in  this  country,  to  so  great  an  ex- 
tent, except  in  an  occasional  glimpse  of  the  city 
slums,  have  I  felt  the  irony  of  present  developments 
in  American  life  as  I  do  here,  in  the  presence  of 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  133 

this  unachieved  democracy  of  Billions'  establish- 
ment, this  wealth  that  means  more  ostentation  and 
expenditure,  bringing  only  cramping  fetters,  instead 
of  a  real  enrichment  of  life.  In  the  raw  and  shining 
crudeness  here  one  finds  far  less  justification  of  great 
possessions  than  in  cases  where  hereditary  tastes 
and  standards  dominate,  making  dollars  serve  the 
higher  purpose  of  feeding  mind  and  soul. 

Thinking  of  this  last  night,  I  went  to  sleep  in  a 
mood  that,  I  fear,  bordered  on  complacency,  but 
wakened  this  morning  in  bright  October  sunshine 
with  a  sharp  realization  that  some  of  my  criticism 
would  better  be  directed  nearer  home.  My  recog- 
nition of  the  fact  that  I  myself  am  not,  as  yet,  in 
any  real  sense,  a  citizen  of  America,  have  not  earned 
that  right  by  virtue  of  helping  make  and  keep  others 
free,  has,  at  times,  an  unpleasant  poignancy.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  sting  of  conscience,  or  possibly  it 
was  the  pleasant  frosty,  nipping  air  that  drove  me 
forth;  for  some  reason  I  found  it  well-nigh  impos- 
sible to  work,  so  I  closed  my  shop  door  and  walked 
away  from  Mataquoit  and  cobblerdom.  I  spent  the 
entire  day  —  I  had  a  sandwich  with  me  —  walking 
along  the  shore  to  remote  spots  that  I  had  not  seen, 
past  marsh  and  headland  already  wearing  the  first 
flush  of  autumn  coloring.  It  was  hard  scrambling 
part  of  the  way,  and  of  this  I  was  glad;  there  are 
some  mental  predicaments  from  which  only  your 
legs  can  deliver  you. 

In  thinking  of  duty  undone,  I  find  it  impossible 
to  keep  from  including  others  in  the  arraignment; 
how  many  are  the  paths  for  our  straying!  I  went 
astray  through  the  dilettante  spirit  and  became  the 
critic,  the  amused  spectator  of  my  kind.  My  uni- 


134  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

versity  training  did  little  but  foster  this  refined  and 
exclusive  selfishness.  Billions  has  gone  astray  from 
the  simplicity  of  true  American  life  through  his 
yearning  for  wealth  and  his  love  of  ostentation.  But 
how  much  were  we  in  college,  with  our  youthful 
snobbishness,  our  sense  of  caste  and  class,  respon- 
sible for  the  direction  that  his  ambition  took?  I 
can  see  him  now,  mowing  old  Professor  Thomas' 
yard,  while  we  leaned  on  the  fence,  yelling  derisive 
directions  to  him  that  were  meant  to  be  humorous 
but  were,  doubtless,  only  cruel.  We  accepted  him 
good-naturedly  enough  in  all  the  situations  of  col- 
lege life  where  we  were  inevitably  thrown  together, 
but  of  our  ancestral  culture,  our  inherited  finer 
standards,  how  much  did  we  share  with  Billions? 

Jack's  father  has  gone  astray  through  a  selfish 
practical  instinct.  He  is  unpretentious ;  he  is  honest ; 
he  does  his  duty  by  his  business,  and,  in  a  way,  by 
the  town.  But  he  is  narrow;  he  has  failed  to  be 
an  American  citizen  of  full  stature  in  that  the  wel- 
fare of  the  department  store  is  to  him  of  paramount 
importance  by  the  side  of  the  welfare  of  the  country. 
He  has  little  sense  of  the  nation  and  less  than  no 
sense  of  international  duties,  responsibilities,  privi- 
leges. These  business  men  who  are  too  absorbed  for 
any  civic  duty  and  are  color  blind  as  regards  those 
higher  standards  that  are  beginning  to  wave  before 
the  eyes  of  men,  —  what  shall  we  do  with  them? 

Jack's  mother  has  gone  astray  through  fashion 
and  surface  culture.  Yet  we  cannot  blame  women 
for  not  being  citizens  until  we  make  them  citizens ; 
I  hold  her  and  her  sex  absolved  for  the  present  from 
all  civic  responsibilities. 

Old  Joshua  Ridgeway  in  his  great  stone  house  on 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  135 

the  outskirts  of  the  town  has  gone  astray  through 
forgetting  that  he  is  not  his  own  grandfather.  An 
interesting  type  of  failure  is  old  Joshua ;  with  wealth 
enough  for  comfort,  and  to  spare,  he  has  shut  him- 
self up  in  his  ancestral  walls,  sharing  with  no  one, 
saving  for  the  sake  of  saving;  there  is  no  going  in 
or  out  of  life  in  all  that  great  desolate  house. 

It  is  odd,  indeed,  to  fail  to  live,  just  because  your 
grandfather  happened  to  live  before  you !  Was  there 
ever  another  spot  on  earth  where  people  lived  so 
much  in  the  past  as  they  do  here,  so  brooded  over  its 
achievements,  rested  so  supine  in  what  their  an- 
cestors have  done,  even  though  their  ancestors  have 
done  but  little?  Old  ancestor  Ridgeway's  highest 
achievement  was,  evidently,  receiving  a  grant  of 
land  from  the  Crown. 

But  I  must  not  throw  stones;  also  upon  my  family 
tree  creeps  this  deadly  rust. 

Yet  all  this  kind  of  thought  is  futile.  I  am  far 
better  still,  alas !  in  telling  how  we  went  wrong  than 
in  showing  what  we  must  do  in  order  to  go  right. 
Some  days  I  have  not  shoes  enough  to  mend,  and 
critics  flourish  best  in  times  of  idleness.  This  old, 
critical,  analytical  habit  of  thought,  how  I  wish  I 
could  get  rid  of  it!  Creature  of  a  period  which 
taught  us  how  to  pull  apart,  rather  than  how  to  put 
together,  I  must  try  to  forget  the  chief  teaching 
given  me  in  my  youth,  and,  at  this  date,  train 
my  mind  to  habits  of  constructive  thought. 

If  the  Creator  had  paused  on  that  first  day  to 
analyze  the  component  parts  of  chaos,  instead  of 
beginning  to  shape  the  firmament,  the  universe 
would  still  be  uncreated. 


136  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

September  26. 

"I'm  having  serious  trouble  with  my  daughter," 
Billions  Brown  confided  to  me  yesterday. 

My  expression  was,  doubtless,  both  congratula- 
tory and  sympathetic;  I  would  give  a  great  deal  to 
have  a  daughter  like  that  to  have  trouble  with. 

"I  don't  know  what  has  come  over  her,"  he  went 
on ;  "I'd  wring  your  neck,  Masters,  if  I  thought  you 
were  influencing  her  — " 

"No,  no,"  I  told  him,  but  a  bit  guiltily;  "it's  the 
other  way  about;  nowadays  the  old  learn  of  the 
young;  haven't  you  found  that  out  yet?" 

"She's  gone  on  strike,"  said  Billions.  "It's  not 
merely  a  question  of  being  dissatisfied  with  her  lot; 
she's  acting.  She  won't  wear  the  clothes  I  give  her 
nor  eat  the  food  my  chef  provides,  except  the 
simplest.  I  see  her  morning  and  afternoon  in  plain 
linen  frocks,  as  plain  as  my  sisters  used  to  wear. 
And  she  is  behaving  exactly  like  her  grandmother  at 
table,  asking  for  an  egg  or  something  of  the  kind, 
ftnd  passing  most  of  the  courses  by.  If  you  will  be- 
lieve it,  she  is  questioning  the  right  of  possession; 
says  she  doesn't  want  to  own  anything  for  herself; 
wants  to  give  everything  away.  How  can  she  be 
trusted  with  the  fortune  that  will  come  to  her  some 
day?" 

There  was  a  deep  frown  on  Billions'  forehead; 
evidently  the  problems  of  refining  crude  oil  had 
never  presented  anything  so  difficult  as  these  pro- 
cesses whereby  his  daughter's  spirit,  through  influ- 
ences beyond  his  ken,  was  being  refined.  He  was 
almost  paralyzed  by  the  shock  of  what  he  was 
watching,  without  understanding. 

Through  what  he  told  me,  the  impression  that  I 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  137 

already  had  of  his  daughter  is  deepened.  She  is 
high-spirited,  mettlesome,  doubtless  hard-bitted  at 
times;  yet  through  all  the  years  of  her  childhood 
and  girlhood  she  would  have  found  it  difficult  to 
discover  an  occasion  when  she  could  disobey  her 
father,  as  it  was  she  who  gave  commands,  and  Bil- 
lions Brown  delighted  to  obey.  Talk  of  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  America,  and  then  regard  the  American 
parent  in  the  hands  of  the  American  child!  Per- 
haps this  state  of  things  is  inevitable  in  a  democracy 
where  the  child's  opportunity  is  greater  than  that 
of  the  parent.  There  is  often  tragedy  in  this,  but 
not  here ;  this  was  comedy.  Regard  Billions  Brown. 
His  daughter  is  affectionate;  she  is  devoted  to  him, 
but  she  rules  him  absolutely.  Probably  since  the 
time  when  she,  like  other  babes  of  a  year,  had  de- 
sired to  put  her  shoes  and  the  flowers  on  her  hat 
into  her  mouth,  no  wish  of  hers  had  been  denied.  If 
I  feel  in  her  less  humor  than  Jack  has,  I  know  that 
she  has  more  keenness  of  insight,  more  sense  of 
irony,  and  more  impetuous  passion.  She  has  de- 
rived much  from  her  old  grandmother,  much  from 
her  father. 

"Katharine,"  Billions  said  to  me,  "is  obstinate." 

"Strange,  isn't  it?"  I  answered,  "considering  her 
parentage." 

Strong,  delicate,  fine,  proud,  she  is  a  good  example 
of  the  swift  flowering  of  fresh  and  delicate  blossoms 
on  sturdy  old  stock.  When  I  see  her  and  her  father 
together,  I  think  of  an  apple  blossom  on  a  gnarled 
and  ancient  bough. 

I  got  further  light  on  the  dilemma  to-day,  for  we 
had  a  picnic  on  the  rocks,  Jack,  Katharine  and  I. 
It  may  have  shocked  Mrs.  Grundy  of  Mataquoit,  if 


138  A  WORLD  TO   MEND 

she  were  aware  of  it ;  I  do  not  know ;  but  Katharine 
now,  in  the  light  of  her  father's  friendship  with  me 
and  her  grandmother's  approval,  openly  claims  me 
as  a  friend.  When,  this  afternoon,  she  stopped  at 
my  shop  with  a  message  from  her  grandmother,  and, 
in  response  to  my  suggestion  that  she  looked  pale, 
said  that  she  was  actually  hungry,  there  was  nothing 
to  do  but  to  provide  her  with  food. 

"You  see,"  she  said,  "there  is  so  much  unnecessary 
expenditure  at  the  house,  such  quantities  of  food 
wasted,  that  I  cannot  endure  it.  I  have  tried  and 
tried  to  have  it  cut  down,  but  nobody  will  listen. 
I  simply  will  not  eat  what  others  may  not  have;  it 
is  sinful  to  buy  those  rich  things  when  many  people 
are  starving. 

"The  chef,  when  he  is  asked  to  cook  simpler 
things,  says  he  will  leave  if  we  do  not  need  him. 
Anybody  can  cook  common  foodstuffs,  he  says;  he 
cannot  prepare  any  but  elaborate  dishes.  I  really 
think  that  Father  is  afraid  of  him;  at  any  rate  he 
refuses  to  do  a  thing.  He  says  he  has  earned  the 
money  for  all  this  lavishness  and  earned  it  honestly. 
He  says  that  I  ought  to  like  it. 

"I  have  mutinied.  I  will  not  eat  anything  but 
plain  food  that  anybody  may  have,  —  and  it  is  only 
at  breakfast  that  this  kind  of  food  is  to  be  had  at 
horned 

So  we  picnicked  on  the  rocks  by  Simmons  Cove: 
a  loaf  of  graham  bread;  butter  in  waxed  paper; 
potted  tongue;  bananas;  ginger  ale,  and  the  horizon 
line  of  the  blue  sea.  I  doubt  if  Katharine  Brown 
had  ever  relished  food  so  keenly ;  she  ate  ravenously 
and  said  that  it  all  tasted  like  ambrosia.  Obviously 
she  had  never  before  come  into  contact  with  paper 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  139 

napkins;  an  adventure  in  democracy  for  both  of  us, 
and  we  enjoyed  it  hugely. 

As  I  sat  and  smoked  on  the  rock  which  I  had 
chosen  for  myself  I  watched  the  two  chatting  gaily, 
Jack  entirely  happy  except  for  the  thought  of  his 
approaching  return  to  college,  and  Katharine  for- 
getting for  the  moment  the  struggle  of  her  soul  with 
its  clogging  environment.  My  mind  went  back  to 
the  puzzling  problems  presented  by  the  railroad 
strike,  to  the  social  revolution  threatened  in  con- 
stantly increasing  industrial  discontent,  and  then 
to  Katharine's  rebellion  against  her  father.  If  the 
social  revolution  can  only  take,  east,  west,  north, 
south,  the  form  it  is  taking  in  the  household  of 
Billions  Brown,  there  is  hope  for  the  country. 

September  28. 

A  brisk  west  wind  this  morning  and  a  customer 
who  revived  my  faith  in  humanity,  after  my  recent 
disillusionizing  sojourn  in  the  tents  of  the  idle  rich, 
my  self-castigation,  and  my  disheartening  recogni- 
tion of  the  egotism,  the  selfishness  of  the  vast  army 
of  working  men  threatening  to  tie  up  the  business 
of  the  country. 

My  visitor  was  one  who  seemed  unaware  of  the 
money  motive  as  the  supreme  force  in  existence; 
it  was  a  mother  from  a  far-away,  barren  farm,  who 
brought  me  her  boy's  boots  to  see  if  I  could  in  any 
way  make  them  last  another  winter.  Both  mother 
and  son,  I  learned,  endure  extreme  physical  hard- 
ship for  the  sake  of  an  intellectual  ideal  concerning 
the  boy's  future.  She  rises  at  five,  every  morning 
on  cold  winter  days,  to  get  breakfast  by  candlelight ; 
he  does  the  farm  "chores,"  then  walks  five  miles  to 


140  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

high  school,  where  he  is  stubbornly  preparing  for 
college.  Next  year  he  plans  to  go,  without  a  cent, 
to  Bowdoin ;  I  have  been  busy  all  day  with  plans  for 
helping  him  without  interfering  with  his  indepen- 
dence and  his  self-respect. 

No  country  can  be  anything  but  strong  which  is 
fed  at  such  pure  springs  of  aspiration  as  that  of  this 
mother  and  son;  those  morning  griddle  cakes  of 
which  I  have  heard  have  something  of  sacramental 
quality  as  the  two  partake,  the  stars  shining  through 
the  window.  For  the  boy,  a  few  moments'  warmth 
and  comfort,  then  the  high  trail!  It  is  a  relief  to 
come  across,  as  I  do  now  and  then,  these  education- 
inspired  country  folk,  still  holding  the  high  aims  of 
those  who  founded  our  country  as  a  spiritual  aris- 
tocracy, still  uncorrupted  by  passion  for  wealth  and 
for  pleasure. 

This  is  but  one  of  a  number  of  incidents  that  are 
making  me  realize  more  keenly  the  fundamental 
bases  of  power  in  our  democracy;  and,  in  the  face 
of  the  heroisms  of  some  of  these  unpretending 
people,  I  begin  to  regret  for  my  youth  the  lack  of 
hardship  that  might  have  made  me  a  stronger  man, 
with  deeper  understanding  than  I  have  of  my  fellow 
citizens,  their  difficulties,  their  privations,  then-  as- 
pirations, with  deeper  understanding  of  the  real 
forces  of  life.  Nothing  can  take  the  place  of  the 
fight  with  circumstance  that  has  made  strong  men 
and  women  out  of  past  generations.  Realizing  that 
our  leaders  have,  for  the  most  part,  come  out  of 
humble  homes,  farms,  parsonages,  plain  habitations 
of  plain  men,  my  mind  goes  puzzling  along  the 
ways  of  abstract  systems  that  would  equalize  wealth 
and  banish  differences  of  condition.  I  find  in  none 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  141 

of  them,  however,  any  substitute  for  the  challenge 
to  the  individual  that  we  find  in  our  present  — 
granted,  very  faulty  —  system. 

Yet  Billions  Brown  and  all  his  ilk  of  multimillion- 
aires are  wholly  wrong ;  no  man  should  be  permitted 
to  heap  up  stores  upon  stores  of  useless  wealth; 
wholly  wrong  is  the  unabashed  luxury,  the  riotous 
spending  in  useless  ways  of  wealth,  the  country  over. 
God  grant  us  insight  to  find  our  way  out  of  our 
dilemma ! 


XVII 

September  30. 

Jack  has  gone  back  to  college,  after  a  farewell 
visit  to  me,  in  which,  at  first,  he  assumed  a  jollity 
which  he  was  far  from  feeling.  Then  he  grew  shy 
and  silent,  fingering  the  pieces  of  leather  hanging 
on  my  wall  and  behaving  as  if  he  wanted  to  consult 
me,  but  he  did  not.  A  new  Jack  this,  for,  in  the 
earlier  days  of  our  acquaintance,  he  used  to  blurt 
out  everything  that  came  into  his  head.  This  lack 
of  surface  confidence  does  not  trouble  me,  for  it  be- 
tokens something  deeper;  there  is  no  need  of  words 
between  Jack  and  me.  He  flushed  a  bit  as  he  shook 
my  hand: 

"You  will  look  after  things  and  people  up  there, 
won't  you,  Socrates?"  he  asked,  nodding  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Brown  estate. 

I  promised  to  do  my  best.  Now  I  am  trying,  not 
quite  successfully,  to  turn  my  attention  to  shoes. 
My  new  friend,  Alexander  Wallace,  drops  in  oc- 
casionally for  an  hour's  discussion  of  men  and  things. 
I  envy  him,  and  I  admire  him,  this  man  who  has 
no  slippers,  as  the  one  genuine  citizen  I  have  ever 
known;  and  he  admires  Billions! 

Because  he,  an  honest  lawyer,  has  not  acquired 
wealth,  he  looks  upon  himself  as  a  failure;  and  he 
pays  homage  to  this  oil  magnate  who  has  so  glori- 
ously succeeded.  He  talks  of  himself  at  times  wist- 
fully, seeking,  as  he  gives,  sympathy,  and  I  often 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  143 

listen  in  amazement.  One  of  the  oddest  bits  of 
human  psychology  that  I  have  ever  known  is  this 
great  man's  estimate  of  Billions'  achievement  as 
above  his  own.  He  is  sensitive,  a  lover  of  beauty 
and  of  fineness,  human,  lovable,  with  enough  of  im- 
perfection to  enable  him  to  understand  his  fellows. 
It  pleases  me  to  find  in  him  some  foibles  and  limi- 
tations, for  his  praise  is  so  much  in  all  men's  mouths, 
that  I  had  begun  to  fear  that  he  might  prove  a 
monster  of  perfection.  He  is  quickly  touched,  too 
quickly  hurt,  and  one  has  to  watch  one's  words 
with  him ;  yet  he  is  incapable  of  cherishing  a  grudge. 
He  is  at  once  over-sanguine  in  regard  to  measures  of 
public  benefit,  and  a  bit  over-easily  discouraged 
when  things  go  wrong.  Perhaps  this  last  charac- 
teristic is  one  of  the  reasons  why  we  get  on  so  well 
together. 

Meanwhile,  I  do  not  quite  know  how  it  is,  —  per- 
haps my  old  classmate's  loneliness;  perhaps  my  re- 
gret for  earlier  days  when  I  rather  looked  down  on 
him;  perhaps  it  is  the  influence  of  Grandmother 
Brown;  perhaps  it  is  Katharine;  but  I  am  much  at 
Billions'  house.  And  he  is  much  at  my  shop.  He 
shuts  his  eyes  to  a  great  deal,  but  so  do  I. 

I  like  him  better  than  I  did  in  the  college  years, 
though  I  wish  he  could  get  rid  of  his  false  stand- 
ards, —  that  hankering  for  the  world  in  which  I 
was  brought  up,  and  which  I  have  found  so  futile! 

Billions  is  sorry  for  me,  I  can  see,  because  of  my 
degradation  through  work,  work  even  humbler  than 
he  used  to  do.  .  .  .  Last  night,  awkward  and  much 
embarrassed,  he  bluntly  offered  me  money;  he  has 
often  hinted  a  willingness  to  help.  When  I  refused, 
he  suggested  that  he  set  me  up  in  a  business  more 


144  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

appropriate.  How  would  a  book  shop  do?  he 
queried.  It  would  not  do  at  all,  I  said,  in  thanking 
him.  Henceforth  books  shall  take  a  subordinate, 
not  a  principal  place  in  my  life. 

But  I  was  touched  and  was  also  a  bit  remorseful, 
as  one  who  is  sailing  under  false  colors,  in  that  he 
should  think  me  in  need. 

As  he  and  I  talked  on  his  verandah,  or  in  my  shop, 
in  the  evening,  I  realize  more  keenly  than  I  have 
ever  done  how  life  is  dominated  by  what  we  want 
in  the  days  of  youth. 

Billions  wanted  to  be  a  multimillionaire. 

He  is. 

I  wanted  to  be  a  calm,  superior  critic  and  con- 
noisseur. 

I  am. 

And  I  curse  the  day  when,  because  of  false  con- 
ditions, the  idea  first  came  into  my  head.  I  should 
prefer  to  be  a  ploughboy,  doing  my  bit;  achieving; 
turning  up  the  honest  furrow  in  the  soil. 

How  shall  an  older  generation,  which  has  greatly 
failed,  find  the  way  to  shape  the  desire  of  the  young 
toward  the  best  and  simplest?  How  waken  in  them 
that  sense  of  civic  responsibility  which  we  have  so 
greatly  lacked? 

Billions,  with  his  great  palace  on  the  shore,  and 
his  stables,  and  his  servants'  hall,  his  wide  acres, 
has  achieved  everything  that,  as  a  boy,  he  had  de- 
termined to  achieve.  He  had  set  out  to  be  a  great 
trust  magnate ;  he  had  never  set  out  to  be  a  citizen 
of  his  country,  bearing  his  responsibility;  doing  his 
part. 

I  wondered  how  he  liked  it,  Billions  with  his  three- 
hundred-acre  orchard  of  Dead  Sea  fruit. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  145 

"Look  here,  Billions,"  I  said  one  day,  when  we 
were  sitting  on  his  magnificent  verandah,  "you  are 
not  an  American  citizen  at  all." 

"You  are  a  thundering  idiot  to  say  that,"  said 
Billions.  "Don't  I  pay  huge  taxes?" 

"Not  as  large  as  you  are  going  to  pay,"  I  said 
firmly.  This  was  rude.  It  is  strange  how  one's  un- 
dergraduate manners  come  back  at  times  in  the 
presence  of  men  who  were  boys  with  you.  Or  per- 
haps it  was  the  influence  of  Tim;  it  was  like  one  of 
Tun's  short,  sharp,  decisive  barks. 

"But  don't  I  —  don't  I  — " 

"Don't  you  what?"  I  asked  suavely,  for  he  could 
not  think  of  one  civic  duty  that  he  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  rendering  his  country. 

"I  spend  my  money  here,  don't  I?" 

"That's  something,"  I  admitted. 

"I  vote,"  but  he  was  thinking. 

"Billions,"  I  said,  "you  have  a  great  deal  to  say 
about  the  country's  going  wrong;  but  what  part 
have  you  ever  played  in  trying  to  make  it  go  right? 
What  duties  of  citizenship  have  you  ever  taken  up? 
Have  you  had  any  share  in  sound  politics,  in  trying 
to  get  the  right  men  into  the  right  places?  Our 
multimillionaires  have  the  reputation  of  standing 
completely  aside,  except  for  slipping  something  now 
and  then  into  the  pocket  of  a  senator  or  congress- 
man to  speed  things  up  for  business  — " 

This  was  a  chance  shot,  but  it  struck  home ;  I  was 
surprised  to  see  Billions  turn  white,  but  he  was  not 
angry.  Curiously,  the  more  we  lash  each  other  with 
our  tongues,  the  nearer  we  come  to  an  understanding 
intimacy. 

Soon  after  this  I  went  home.    Perhaps  I  was  afraid 


146  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

that  Billions  might  turn  to  ask  me  what  I  had  done 
for  my  country;  my  response  would  have  injured 
the  cause  in  which  I  was  enlisted.  It  is  significant 
that  the  Hebrew  prophets  always  talked  about  other 
people's  pasts,  never  about  their  own ;  other  people's 
present  sins,  never  their  own.  I  doubt  if  it  was 
good  taste  that  kept  them  from  talking  about  them- 
selves; it  was  better  for  the  cause  for  them  to  be 
reticent. 

But  I  am  astonished,  now  that  the  bonds  of  my 
old  dilettantism  are  broken,  to  find  how  many  con- 
victions I  have;  how  strong  they  are;  how  much  of 
my  grandfather  there  is  in  them.  The  same  in 
principle,  in  kind,  even  if  different  in  form  and  in 
application,  as  those  of  the  stern  old  gentleman 
whose  portrait  hangs  on  my  library  wall.  They  have 
outlived  my  long  years  of  silence;  of  reserve;  even 
my  college  education. 

October  8. 

A  tang  in  the  air  and  a  swift  sea  wind;  marshes 
and  hills  beyond  royal  in  red  and  brown  and  gold ; 
both  sea  and  sky  intensely  blue;  a  great  cawing  of 
crows  in  the  pine  woods  back  of  us,  and  solemn  crow 
processions  to  the  rocks  in  search  of  food. 

Through  Grandmother  Brown's  flattering  ap- 
proval of  me,  and  through  the  girl's  evident  wish,  I 
am  permitted  to  talk  freely  with  Katharine  Brown. 
Her  controlled  reserve,  the  conventionality  that  is 
but  a  mask  placed  upon  her  by  the  finishing  school 
have  vanished  for  the  most  part,  and  I  am  discover- 
ing how  sweet  and  unspoiled  she  is.  Sometimes  I 
see  in  her  a  little  merry,  gray-eyed  girl  of  sunny 
roadsides  on  her  way  to  school,  and  she  laughs  at 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  147 

times  as  if  she  were  but  ten  years  old.  What  would 
Billions  say  if  he  saw  my  mental  picture  of  Katha- 
rine trudging  along  the  daisied  roadsides  with  a 
dinner  pail? 

For  all  her  correctness  of  manner  and  her  more 
than  unimpeachable  attire,  she  does  not  fit  into  this 
world  which  Billions  has  created  for  her,  and  her 
restlessness  increases  daily.  She  and  her  grand- 
mother wear  the  alien  look  of  two  wild,  bright-eyed 
birds  shut  in  a  gilded  cage.  Katharine  has  much 
of  the  older  woman's  essential  simplicity,  but  is  not 
as  yet  so  sure  of  herself;  she  is  a  bit  bewildered  by 
her  surroundings,  alert,  watching  for  a  way  of  es- 
cape. There  is  trouble  ahead  for  Billions,  spite  of  his 
daughter's  evident  affection  for  him;  meanwhile,  it 
is  charming  to  see  her  try  to  take  the  place  of  two 
daughters,  now  that  Clare  is  away  at  school. 

My  respect  for  her  deepens  with  each  glimpse  I 
have  of  her.  Here  is  a  woman,  fine,  practical,  strong, 
of  great  potential  power.  That  power  is  wakening; 
here  is  but  youth,  stumbling,  trying  to  find  the  path. 
I  watch  her,  understanding;  day  by  day  registers 
something  of  her  struggle:  there  are  some  aspects 
of  life,  thank  God,  with  which  one  can  sympathize 
without  effort. 

When  she  questions  me  I  answer  her,  but  I  try 
not  to  preach,  yet  much  of  my  new-found  philos- 
ophy about  the  interdependence  of  human  beings 
she  has  extracted  from  me.  I  feel  humble  in  her 
presence;  perhaps  nature  intended  us  to  feel  so  in 
the  presence  of  womankind.  She,  who  is  practical, 
as  Billions'  daughter  would  needs  be,  will  make  good, 
where  I  only  theorize,  for  when  I  think  of  myself, 
my  mind  is  still  full  of  an  ironic  sense  of  failure. 


148  A   WORLD    TO    MEND 

The  feminine  will  is  swifter  and  truer  in  its  ac- 
tion than  ours. 

We  talk  of  Jack,  and  she  speaks  of  him  frankly 
and  freely,  as  she  would  of  a  girl-friend.  Her  eyes 
are  fixed  on  something  beyond  Jack;  whether  he  is 
included  as  an  essential  part  of  the  picture  I  have 
yet  to  learn;  I  am  not  so  sure  of  this  as  I  was.  I 
wish  that  I  could  read  her  dream. 

October  10. 

I  was  greatly  pleased  this  afternoon,  when  I  went 
to  the  post  office  before  supper,  to  see  that  the  little 
group  of  men  gathered  on  the  street  corner  discuss- 
ing confidentially  the  news  in  the  evening  papers, 
instead  of  ceasing  to  speak  when  I  passed  them, 
looked  in  a  half  friendly  fashion  toward  me  and 
even  gave  me  welcome. 

"Here's  Masters,"  said  Phil  Landers,  the  express- 
man: "let's  ask  him." 

They  were  talking  about  the  offensive  on  the 
Western  Front,  and  my  opinion  was  of  no  value 
whatever;  but  our  remarks  regarding  the  present 
situation  led  to  a  discussion  of  the  principles  at 
stake,  and,  by  common  consent,  we  adjourned  to 
Noah  Price's  grocery.  To  be  invited  to  sit  on  a 
barrel  head  by  men  who  have  previously  rather 
shunned  your  acquaintance  is  no  small  honor;  so 
might  one  feel  upon  entering  an  exclusive  club. 
There  was  a  certain  thrill  of  satisfaction  as  I  ac- 
cepted; perhaps  I  have  never  before  felt  so  much 
at  one  with  my  kind. 

Joe  Hincks,  the  policeman,  guarded  the  doorway, 
one  eye  on  the  street,  one  on  the  group  inside;  my 
tow-headed  friend,  Phil  Landers,  stood  checking 


A   WORLD,   TO   MEND  149 

entries  in  his  order  book  as  he  listened;  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  shop  lolled  over  the  counter,  his  fat 
face  displaying  a  sleepy  interest  in  what  was  going 
on;  perhaps  a  dozen  others  were  grouped  about,  on 
chairs,  or  counter,  boxes  and  barrel  heads. 

Ever  since  I  came  I  have  looked  enviously  at  the 
gatherings  of  men  at  the  post  office,  or  on  some 
street  corner,  and  I  was  vastly  delighted  to  find 
myself  within  the  charmed  circle.  Tim  wagged  his 
tail  with  an  energy  of  friendliness  that  betrayed  on 
his  part  the  fulfilment  of  a  long-deferred  hope.  I 
took  care  not  to  say  too  much,  but  listened  with 
much  satisfaction  to  a  rough  but  unanimous  con- 
demnation of  might  as  right.  Here,  I  kept  saying 
to  myself,  are  the  men  behind  the  lines;  here  are 
those  who  represent  that  for  which  the  nations  are 
fighting.  Here  is  a  chance  to  sum  up  for  or  against 
democracy  as  represented  by  the  rank  and  file.  Do 
these  men  make  good?  And  I  admitted  that,  funda- 
mentally, so  far  as  opinion  went,  they  made  good. 

I  came  home  vastly  pleased,  feeling  that  I  am 
making  progress;  I  have  learned  to  say  "hello"  to 
quite  a  number  of  people ;  I  am  a  man  among  men. 
I  find  more  hope  in  the  fact  that  these  neighbors  of 
mine  ask  me  to  join  them  than  I  should  find  in  pos- 
session of  power  to  answer  all  their  questions.  Many 
of  these  represent  problems  for  which  I  have  no  so- 
lution, yet  I  feel  that  they  are  as  good  as  solved  if 
we  can  go  puzzling  our  way  along  together,  in 
friendliness,  toward  a  finer  citizenship,  and  thus  to 
a  fairer  government. 


150  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

October  12. 

A  letter  from  Jack,  the  first  I  have  received.  I 
have  been  waiting  for  this  with  tense  expectancy; 
whether  this  is  be'cause  of  desire  for  gratification  of 
my  affection,  or  because  I  am  watching  for  the 
growth  of  a  man  in  him  I  am  unable  to  say.  He 
is  to  me  as  the  very  soul  of  my  youth,  a  finer  and 
stronger  self;  and  my  whole  present  life  is  wrapped 
up  in  the  hope  that  he  may  waken  to  a  sense  of  a 
man's  duty  at  this  crisis,  may  make  the  great  choice. 
The  letter  ran: 

Dear  Socrates: 

You  must  have  seen  that  we  came  out  on  top  in 
last  week's  football  scrimmage. 

It  was  great. 

Fine  times  here;  I  go  to  as  many  as  a  third  of 
my  lectures,  which  is  something  new  for  me.  Got 
to  get  wise,  you  see,  if  I  am  going  to  talk  to  you. 

How's  boots?    Hope  to  see  you  within  ten  days. 

JACK 

P.  S.  Three  of  our  class  enlisted  with  the  Cana- 
dians. I  may. 

So  men  as  well  as  women,  I  reflected,  write  letters 
for  the  postscript.  This  is  the  first  intimation  he 
has  ever  given  of  serious  purpose  to  join  the  crusade. 

I  sat  with  this  letter  in  my  hand  through  the  en- 
tire evening,  and  I  thought  of  Abraham  and  Isaac. 
I  am  trying  to  build  my  altar  whereon  to  offer  up 
that  which  has  become  most  precious  to  me  of  all 
living  things.  I  know  that  this  kind  of  love  is  a 
feeling  that  will  not  waken  for  any  other  human 
being;  there  is,  in  a  life-time,  one  and  one  only  vi- 
bration upon  these  chords.  It  seemed  to  me  last 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  151 

night,  as  I  sat  watching  the  street  lamps  flicker  and 
go  out,  that  perhaps  my  contribution  to  this  great 
struggle  for  fairer  dealing  among  men  will  come  in 
the  sacrifice  I  must  offer  in  getting  the  boy  to  go. 
All  night  under  my  patchwork  quilt,  all  day  at  my 
bench,  and  later,  alone  with  the  surf  on  the  rocks, 
I  have  fought  my  fight.  I  am  stung  by  the  intensity 
of  my  desire  that  he  should  rise  to  the  challenge, 
should  make  good ;  I  am  appalled  by  the  immensity 
of  my  personal  loss  if  he  does  indeed  go. 


XVIII 

October  15. 

A  clash  has  come  between  father  and  daughter. 
I  do  not  know  all  the  steps  in  Katharine's  patriotic 
and  personal  rebellion,  but  I  know  that  the  war  for 
independence  is  on. 

It  was  Billions  himself  who  told  me;  his  splendid, 
over-splendid  equipage  stopped  at  my  shop  yester- 
day; coachman  and  horses  champed  and  chafed  as 
the  master  bent  his  head  to  enter  my  humble  door- 
way. Billions  prefers  horses  and  carriages  to 
motors,  though  he  has  the  latter,  because  they  are 
what  all  men  want.  But  in  his  youth,  dreaming  of 
his  future,  he  dreamed  of  horses  and  carriages,  and 
horses  and  carriages  are  now  his.  Alas  for  a  country 
whose  youth  dream  only  in  terms  of  things ! 

He  came  in  muttering  about  the  serpent's  tooth, 
and  it  was  some  time  before  he  could  tell  me  what 
was  wrong.  At  last  I  gathered  that  his  daughter, 
his  pampered  daughter,  had  broken  to  him  the  fact 
that  she  intended  to  enter  a  nurses'  training  school 
in  the  hope  of  going  to  France  to  care  for  wounded 
soldiers. 

Billions  was  furious  at  the  thought  of  Katharine's 
doing  something  useful.  "Can't  they  hire  people  to 
do  these  things?"  he  stormed. 

He  looked  years  older  than  when  I  had  seen  him 
last ;  his  face  had  lost  its  sleekness.  She,  for  whom  all 
the  efforts  of  his  life  had  been  spent  in  heaping  high 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  153 

his  wealth,  was  nullifying  all  that  effort  in  a  mo- 
ment. He  had  taken  her  up  into  a  high  mountain 
and  shown  her  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and 
the  glory  thereof,  and  she  would  have  none  of  them. 
Would  I  try  to  bring  her  to  her  senses?  I  had  in- 
fluence with  her. 

What  irony  of  life  was  this?  Here  was  the  man 
who  accounted  me  partly  responsible  for  his  mis- 
fortunes turning  in  helpless  appeal  to  have  me  undo 
what  he  thought  was  my  own  work! 

"I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind,  Billions,"  I  said, 
taking  up  my  needle.  "You  ought  to  be  very  proud 
of  her." 

He  went  out,  slamming  my  door. 

To-day  I  met  Katharine  on  the  street;  she  half 
stopped,  as  if  to  speak,  then  merely  nodded  and 
went  on.  The  girl's  eyes  were  bewildered;  doubt- 
less the  absolute  slave  has  turned  into  the  stern 
parent,  and,  practically  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
is  issuing  orders.  I  thought  that  I  could  read  in  her 
face  successive  phases  of  her  struggle,  —  anger,  de- 
fiance, sorrow  at  making  her  father  suffer,  and  ab- 
solute determination  to  disobey,  if  need  be,  and  live 
her  life  in  the  light  of  a  higher  ideal. 

October  17. 

Jack  has  been  home  for  the  two  days,  quite  as 
vigorous  and  as  jolly  as  ever,  yet  in  some  way 
changed.  There  are  faint  lines  of  thought  on  his 
forehead,  and  his  whole  face,  a  bit  thinner  than 
when  I  first  saw  him,  is  being  shaped  and  molded. 
How  far  has  he  gone,  I  wonder,  toward  taking  up 
the  holy  quest?  In  spite  of  his  recent  letter,  we 
did  not  speak  of  this.  I  have  the  feeling  of  standing, 


154  A   WORLD    TO    MEND 

waiting  by  the  roadside,  watching  for  one  who,  I 
know,  will  come  this  way. 

We  met  for  a  few  minutes  in  the  Browns'  garden, 
for  Billions  dare  not  forbid  the  boy  to  come  to  the 
house  while  his  old  mother  is  there.  I  left  him  with 
Katharine  by  the  huge  yellow  chrysanthemums  and 
came  back  to  my  shoes. 

That  mysterious  inner  reason  why  I  must  share 
Jack's  life  with  him  explains,  though  it  itself  is  for- 
ever inexplicable,  a  curious  excitement  which  I  have 
from  the  first  felt  in  Katharine  Brown's  presence 
when  he  was  there.  There  have  been  times  when 
I  have  watched  with  tense  anxiety;  times  in  which 
I  have  held  my  breath;  times  in  which  utterly  un- 
accountable joy  has  come  to  me,  and  I  have  won- 
dered, I  whose  life  has  been  rather  barren  of  swift 
heart-beats,  why;  times  in  which,  in  great  suspense, 
I  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  I  know  not  what.  Know- 
ing the  strange  bond  between  us,  I  should  have  un- 
derstood sooner. 

It  is  curious  that,  when  I  am  alone  with  Katha- 
rine, I  am  aware  only  of  the  waiting  mind  and  the 
beautiful  soul  of  her;  when  Jack  is  near,  to  this  is 
added  an  almost  too  poignant  sense  of  her  loveli- 
ness of  face  and  hair,  her  grace  of  motion,  the  fine 
strength  and  slenderness  of  her.  I  do  not  really 
know  whether  she  is  outwardly  beautiful  or  not,  for 
I  never  actually  see  her  with  my  own  eyes. 

"Did  Katharine  tell  you  her  plans?"  I  asked  Jack 
when  he  said  good-by. 

"Yes,"  said  Jack  solemnly;  "she  did,"  and  was 
silent;  he  did  not  need  to  say  more. 

Through  the  growth  of  these  two  I  became  aware 
of  growth  in  choicer  spirits,  the  country  over,  in  un- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  155 

derstanding  of  the  present  crisis  and  in  determina- 
tion to  help. 

October  20. 

It  is  difficult  these  days  to  sit  and  cobble;  I  prick 
my  fingers  more  than  is  my  wont.  Perhaps  it  is 
restlessness,  perhaps  it  is  increasing  regard  for 
people;  something,  at  any  rate,  has  driven  me  out 
to  see  more  of  my  kind.  It  never  occurred  to  me 
before  that  people,  plain  people,  could  be  so  inter- 
esting; doubtless  Alexander  Wallace  is  partly  re- 
sponsible for  opening  my  eyes,  with  his  character 
sketches,  full  of  imaginative  insight,  of  the  inhabi- 
tant of  Mataquoit,  his  stories,  tragic  or  otherwise, 
of  their  past  lives.  I  have  been  trying,  in  a  quiet 
way,  to  find  out  if  there  are  any  actual  sufferers  in 
town;  hence  my  acquaintance  with  the  interior  of 
the  hut  of  old  Mrs.  Mooney,  and  with  that  lesser 
chaos,  the  kitchen  of  Sam  Hicks,  the  odd-job  man. 
I  made  poor  work  in  mending  a  boot  which  he 
brought  me  a  few  days  ago;  when  he  took  it  away 
this  afternoon  I  saw  disappointment  in  his  face. 
Outside  he  met  the  postman,  and  I  heard  him  say, 
though  I  am  sure  I  was  not  intended  to  hear: 

"He's  a  damn  bad  cobbler,  but  he  is  a  white  man, 
all  right." 

I  feel  inordinately  proud. 

October  21. 

The  crisis  at  the  great  house  deepens,  for  Katha- 
rine persists  in  her  purpose,  as  any  one  who  knew  her 
would  expect.  Billions,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
scowls  at  her;  her  sister  Clare,  home  for  a  week- 
end, looks  at  her  with  adoring  eyes. 


156  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

Billions  has  cut  short  his  daughter's  allowance, 
refusing  to  sanction  her  plan  in  any  way;  mean- 
while, old  Grandmother  Brown  is  flinging  her  brave 
person  into  the  breach.  She  said  to  Billions  a  few 
days  ago : 

"Let  your  daughter  do  as  she  wants;  you  have 
minded  me  all  your  life:  you  are  not  going  to  begin 
at  nigh  sixty  to  disobey  me,  are  you?" 

It  was  Billions  himself  who  told  me  this;  my 
appreciation  of  his  mother  is  one  of  the  things  that 
make  him  like  me,  for  I  can  see  that  he  does  like 
me. 

Billions  wears  a  puzzled  face.  When  the  abject 
slave  of  more  than  twenty  years  starts  out  to  be  the 
cruel,  tyrannical  parent,  he  has  naturally  some  diffi- 
culty in  establishing  his  position. 

I  was  sorry  for  Billions.  To  have  tried  merely  to 
spoil  her;  to  have  missed  his  chance  to  be  a  father  of 
that  girl !  Billions  Brown,  the  most  successful  man 
on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  is  a  complete  failure  in 
life. 

His  face  was  a  study  when  he  came  upon  Grand- 
mother Brown  and  me  conspiring  together  to-day 
in  the  smallest  room  we  could  find  at  Round  Towers. 
She  has,  it  seems,  something  more  than  a  thousand 
dollars  in  a  savings  bank,  not  the  gift  of  Billions; 
it  was  left  her  by  her  husband.  This  she  proposes 
to  give  to  Katharine  to  defray  the  expenses  of  her 
training,  and  she  was  listening  with  some  astonish- 
ment to  my  counter  proposal. 

I  waited  patiently  until  my  host  had  finished,  but 
seized  on  the  first  opportunity  to  speak. 

"Billions,"  I  said,  "you  must  do  as  you  choose; 
you  are  wrong,  however,  in  thinking  I  have  incited 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  157 

your  daughter  to  disobey  you.  I  knew  her  decision 
after  it  was  made,  not  in  the  making.  If  she  chooses 
to  risk  her  life  in  France,  I  can  only  admire  her,  and 
neither  you  nor  I  can  admire  her  enough. 

"And  I  will  add  this:  if  you  cast  her  off,  and  she 
will  permit  me,  I  will  advance  whatever  money  is 
necessary  to  secure  her  training." 

Billions  grinned. 

''You  will  support  her,  I  suppose,  on  your  two 
dollars  and  forty-seven  cents  a  week?" 

I  told  him  that  I  should  not  need  to ;  that  I  have 
plenty  of  money. 

"Then  what  tomfoolery  is  this?"  demanded 
Billions.  "What  are  you  masquerading  here  for?" 

"It  is  the  tomfoolery  of  trying  to  learn  to  be  a 
human  being,"  I  answered.  He  looked  genuinely 
concerned. 

"Are  you  crazy?"  he  asked.  "I  thought  you  had 
lost  everything  you  had." 

"What  I  have  lost,"  I  retorted,  "was  lost  where 
I  meant  to  lose  it,  some  in  ambulances  on  the  west- 
ern front ;  some  in  Belgian  food  supplies.  I  fitted 
up  a  ship  and  sent  it  over."  (I  should  never  have 
made  this  admission  to  any  one  except  Billions.) 

"Like  you,  I  had  a  great  deal  more  money  than 
any  one  human  being  has  a  right  to  have;  there's 
enought  left  to  lie  heavy  on  my  conscience.  How 
about  yours?" 

Billions  snorted  and  left  us.  After  he  had  gone, 
Grandmother  Brown  accepted,  with  a  twinkle,  my 
offer  of  a  loan  to  Katharine  to  defray  her  expenses 
in  the  training  school;  but  the  loan  is  to  be  made 
in  her  grandmother's  name. 

"It  won't  run  long,"  said  the  old  lady,  taking  up 


158  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

her  knitting.    "My  son  always  comes  round  after 
a  little  while." 

October  26. 

For  several  days  I  have  not  seen  Katharine,  but 
I  know  with  what  vigor  she  is  going  about  her  prep- 
arations, now  that  her  decision  is  made.  She  is  one 
who  will  ride  straight  and  swiftly  toward  the  goal, 
when  once  the  goal  is  known.  There  are  not  genera- 
tions enough  of  artificial  life  between  her  and  the 
soil  to  stamp  out  a  primitive  strength  of  energy  and 
will,  and  her  slender  body  is  all  a-quiver  with  vi- 
tality, inherited  from  ancestors  who  toiled  out  of 
doors.  Now,  with  the  awakened  soul  active  within 
her,  she  has  become  an  irresistible  force;  this  call 
of  the  great  present,  which  is  slowly  but  surely 
rousing  Jack,  is  proving  a  restraint  to  Katharine, 
giving  steadiness  and  direction  to  what  might  be 
over-impetuous  action. 

Billions'  continued  opposition  is  as  obstinate  as  it 
is  futile;  he  can  do  nothing  with  his  daughter,  and 
he  does  not  pretend  that  he  can  do  anything  with 
her.  He  comes  to  me  for  consolation,  and  I  am 
indeed  sorry  for  him,  but  my  pity  is  tinged  with 
something  that  is  not  compassion;  how  completely 
this  over-successful  man,  with  all  his  business  in- 
sight, has  failed  to  see  the  point  of  life!  Perhaps 
it  is  only  through  hurt  as  keen  as  this  that  his  vision 
can  be  cleared. 

October  28. 

To-day  Grandmother  Brown  sent  for  me  to  tell 
me  that  she  is  going  home;  her  old  face  bore  the 
look  of  an  exile  whose  term  of  banishment  has  ended. 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  159 

Her  predicament  at  Round  Towers  has  always  filled 
me  with  a  sense  of  pity  and  of  admiration,  for  she 
bears  her  trials  gallantly  and  is  obviously  willing  to 
face  them  because  of  her  love  for  Billions.  Billions 
cannot  visit  her,  or  thinks  he  cannot,  in  her  story- 
and-a-half  cottage  home;  it  was  ridiculous,  his 
mother  said,  that  he  felt  himself  too  great  to  come 
to  the  place  where  he  used  to  spade  up  the  garden 
and  mend  the  picket  fence  himself. 

She  would  not  leave  before  Katharine  was  fairly 
launched,  she  told  me,  except  for  the  fact  that  her 
health  was  suffering;  the  food  was  not  such  as  she 
needed,  and  a-t  home  she  was  accustomed  to  do  a 
certain  amount  of  work  every  day,  thus  getting 
needed  exercise.  I  could  see  that  she  wanted  her 
own  stove,  her  teakettle,  and  the  little  mahogany 
table  on  which  she  has  her  tea. 

Katharine  she  entrusted  to  my  care  during  the 
remaining  time  of  her  stay  here,  she  hoped  that 
I  would  write  her  now  and  then  during  the  winter, 
and  she. gave  me  the  girl's  address.  It  seems  that 
a  great  physician  in  New  York  City,  who  was  once 
a  country  boy  helped  by  Grandmother  Brown,  has 
secured  for  Katharine  a  place  in  a  hospital  where 
she  can  secure  training  sufficient  to  send  her  to  the 
front  in  much  shorter  time  than  the  Red  Cross  de- 
mands. 

Mrs.  Brown  thanked  me  for  having  helped  her 
granddaughter  discover  her  deeper  self,  though 
Grandmother  Brown  did  not,  of  course,  use  these 
words. 

"She's  a  good  girl;  I  can  see  her  grandfather  in 
her.  He  never  would  have  stood  for  anything  that 
was  sham,  and  I'm  afraid  that  Ami  — " 


160  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

She  looked  about,  with  the  air  she  always  wore 
here  of  complete  detachment  from  her  surroundings. 
The  oak  panelling,  the  Japanese  vases,  the  furnish- 
ings of  the  room  were  not  in  themselves  sham,  but 
I  knew  what  she  meant. 

We  had  a  long  and  confidential  talk  in  which  we 
came  to  a  complete  agreement  in  regard  to  Jack. 

Then  she  went  back  to  her  knitting.  There  was 
about  her  as  she  sat  there  an  expression  seen  some- 
tunes  in  the  fortunate  old  —  too  few,  alas !  —  of 
having  come  into  a  bit  of  Golden  Age,  after  the 
difficulties  and  endeavors  of  the  fighting  years,  of 
having  time  to  watch,  enjoy,  and  understand. 

It  is  such  a  look  as  a  ship  sometimes  wears  in  a 
sunny  harbor. 

She  has  earned  her  days  of  rest.  Of  all  the  people 
I  have  encountered  in  Mataquoit,  not  even  except- 
ing Alexander  Wallace,  old  Grandmother  Brown 
seems  the  one  who  has  most  ably  and  devotedly  ful- 
filled her  duties  as  an  American  citizen,  she  who  is 
not  legally  even  a  citizen. 

She  has  faced  unflinchingly  every  responsibility 
presented  to  her.  Every  demand  of  life  upon  her, 
physical,  mental,  moral,  spiritual,  she  has  met; 
all  that  has  been  entrusted  to  her  by  church  or 
state,  community  or  family,  she  has  performed. 

A  gallant  creature  who  —  if  the  expression  may 
be  forgiven  —  has  taken  every  hedge,  however  high. 


XIX 

November  15. 

October  has  gone,  and  Indian  Summer  has  set  a 
seal  of  silence  on  our  lips.  I  do  not  know  why  it  is, 
but  the  season  makes  words  seem  futile ;  the  hushed 
expectancy  of  nature  imposes  a  mood  that  reaches 
beyond  the  confines  of  human  experiences.  Great 
inner  harmonies  become  almost  audible,  and  the 
listener  feels  that  he  may  perchance  in  another  mo- 
ment hear  a  greater  voice  than  our  own. 

The  sea  wears  a  subdued  and  hazy  blue;  the 
many  colors  of  marsh  and  headland  blend  in  dim 
loveliness  near  and  far;  the  horizon  line  of  ocean 
and  land  seems  to  enclose  a  world  wrhose  every  path 
should  be  a  path  of  beauty  —  alas !  — 

Billions  Brown  has  taken  his  luxurious  way  to 
his  distant  city  establishment ;  Katharine  is  in  New 
York,  beginning  her  training,  —  the  look  on  her  face 
when  she  said  good-by  was  like  that  of  frosted  glass 
over  incandescent  flame.  Jack  I  see  now  and  then 
at  week-ends,  but  Tim  and  I  are  much  alone.  It  is 
impossible  to  keep  from  realizing  that  Tim  is  glad 
that  everybody  that  counts  has  gone  away,  except 
himself. 

Loneliness  follows  this  sweeping  of  people  from 
the  stage;  not  one  is  left  to  connect  the  scenes,  as 
in  French  fashion.  With  my  friends  away,  and  with 
daily  fewer  feet  coming  to  be  shod,  I  am  more  often 
than  I  like  thrown  back  upon  my  old  occupation  of 


162  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

thinking,  and  I  realize  that  now  comes  the  test  of 
me  and  my  steadfastness  of  purpose.  With  the  nov- 
elty of  my  first  days  of  experience  here  worn  off, 
and  my  curiosity  in  regard  to  my  fellow  citizens 
somewhat  satisfied;  with  the  young  folk  gone,  who 
have  absorbed  my  interest  and  made  life  more  vital 
to  me  than  it  has  ever  been  before,  so  that  I  have 
frankly  taken  refuge  in  them  from  the  troublesome 
lines  of  thought  which  I  have  started,  —  I  am  sheer 
against  my  task,  facing  it  really  for  the  first  time, 
the  hard  task  of  knowing  my  neighbor;  the  harder 
task  of  wanting  to  know  my  neighbor;  the  hardest 
of  all,  —  making  my  neighbor  want  to  know  me,  so 
that  I  may  share  with  him  whatever  the  gods  have 
granted  me  and  gain  from  him  whatever  wisdom  he 
has  learned  of  life. 

I  went  last  night  to  a  church  sociable.  .  .  .  The 
net  result  of  this  human  intercourse  is  not  ready  for 
record,  for  I  am  not  sure  where  it  belongs  in  my 
ledger.  It's  a  long,  long  way  to  that  land  of  under- 
standing and  of  sympathy  toward  which  we  travel : 
I  must  hasten  my  pace. 

Much  comfort  comes  to  me  on  chilly  autumn 
evenings  from  the  open  fire  in  my  rough  fireplace, 
yet  all  this  seems  a  thin  and  shaded  existence,  for 
I  miss  Jack  increasingly.  When  I  read,  printed 
words  no  longer  satisfy  as  they  used  to  do,  and  my 
own  life  seems  again  to  lack  grip  on  reality,  to  be 
fading  into  a  theory. 

"The  great  spectacle  of  modern  democracy  de- 
ploying its  forces  is  more  moving  than  any  pallid 
ideals  of  the  past,"  I  read  last  night,  in  a  student's 
book;  "it  has  the  grandeur  and  breadth  of  the  large 
phenomena  of  nature;  it  is  wide  as  the  sunrise;  its 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  163 

advance  is  as  the  onset  of  the  sea  and  has  like 
rumors  of  victory  and  defeat." 

To-day  I  walk  on  the  beach,  pondering  these 
words.  They  are  great  words.  I  find  it  easy  to  re- 
late them  to  my  thought,  my  hope  for  man;  I  find 
it  hard,  at  times,  to  relate  them  to  the  Mataquoit 
town  meeting ;  the  Mataquoit  election  day ;  to  many 
types  of  people  with  whom  I  share  the  streets  of 
Mataquoit. 

November  17. 

Working  in  my  shop,  or  lying  under  my  patch- 
work counterpane  at  night,  I  hear  constantly  the 
sound  of  passing  feet;  doubtless  my  new  profession 
makes  me  more  aware  of  footsteps  and  of  their 
significance  than  I  used  to  be.  There  are  swift 
running  feet  of  children;  slow  feet;  halting  feet; 
sometimes  the  shuffling  feet  of  the  old;  feet  that 
know  their  goal,  and  feet  that  stray  this  way  or  that, 
uncertain  of  any  aim.  I  listen  most  intently  to 
the  footsteps  of  the  young,  as  a  group  of  youths  go 
past,  a  group  of  young  girls,  or  two  young  lovers, 
learning  to  keep  step. 

Listening,  I  seem  to  hear  the  tread  of  the  coming 
race,  bringing  in  the  democracy  to  be.  Often  I  dis- 
cern but  confused  and  aimless  tramping,  but  there 
are  times  when  the  sound  of  the  sea  blends  all  the 
varied  footsteps  into  harmony,  and  then  I  hear,  far 
off,  the  tread  of  an  innumerable  host,  stepping  to 
the  music  of  a  common  ideal,  marching  toward  a 
great  goal,  a  government  based  upon  an  understand- 
ing sympathy,  a  generous  and  harmonious  ruling  of 
the  people  by  the  people,  for  the  people,  not  for 
self  interest. 


164  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

Such  moments  come  for  the  most  part  at  night, 
when  vexing  sights  and  sounds  are  absent.  It  is 
easier  to  believe  and  to  hope,  in  these  quiet  hours 
when  the  soul's  eye  has  keener  vision  because  the 
sight  of  the  bodily  eye  is  withdrawn.  I  wonder  if 
great  faiths,  as  well  as  great  art  inspirations  have 
not  been  conceived  at  night.  .Certain  it  is  that,  if 
I  am  soothed  to  sleep  by  an  imagined  music,  sweeter 
than  the  music  of  the  spheres,  I  waken  to  hear  the 
angry  tread  of  men  disputing,  —  perhaps  John  Wil- 
kins  wrangling  over  the  axe  which  he  loaned  yester- 
day to  old  Joe  Peters,  and  which  came  home  dulled. 
How  shall  mankind  learn  to  walk  beyond  its  sense 
of  private  grievance?  Voices  here  echo  voices  of  men 
the  country  over;  it  is  still  the  old  slogan  of  men's 
rights,  not  men's  duties,  their  civic  responsibilities. 

How  can  people  live  near  the  sea  and  learn  so 
little  of  its  vast  harmony? 

November  20. 

With  Jack  away,  and  fewer  people  tramping  the 
streets  of  Mataquoit  to  wear  out  their  shoes,  I  find 
time  to  see  much  of  my  new  friend,  Alexander  Wal- 
lace. Even  to  exchange  a  jest  with  him  as  he  goes 
to  his  work  in  the  morning  has  a  heartening  effect, 
and  I  find  myself  waiting  with  eagerness  for  his 
shrewd  yet  kindly  comments  upon  people.  He  has 
an  affectionate  appreciation  of  the  foibles  of  human 
kind;  he  could  not  serve  his  fellows  half  so  well 
without  this  keenness  of  insight.  It  has  become 
something  of  a  duty  to  lure  him  out  for  extended 
walks,  as  his  office  hours  are  all  too  long,  and  his 
practice  of  humanity  eats  up  his  leisure  time. 

Upon  nearer  acquaintance,   my  admiration   in- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  165 

creases;  this  man  has  a  genius  for  living.  I  berate 
myself  as  I  walk  by  his  side,  listening;  I  can  find 
absorbing  interest  only  in  the  few  people  for  whom 
I  deeply  care;  toward  the  others  I  merely  try  to  do 
my  duty.  Here  is  one  who  really  loves  his  kind,  who 
did  not  have  to  learn  sympathy.  He  listens  to  his 
neighbor's  grievances  and  relieves  them  if  he  can. 
He  lends  an  ear  to  human  claims,  and,  if  he  finds 
them  righteous,  tries  to  satisfy  them,  —  this  in  both 
the  professional  and  the  unprofessional  sense.  To 
me  he  says  that  he  is  an  unsuccessful  lawyer;  from 
my  neighbors  I  have  learned  the  secret  of  whatever 
lack  of  prosperity  there  may  be;  they  tell  me  that 
he  always  reconciles  the  disputants  if  he  can,  bring- 
ing together  the  husband  and  wife  who  sue  for  di- 
vorce, inducing  farmers  who  quarrel  over  boundaries 
to  shake  hands  and  make  up.  He  searches  continu- 
ally for  channels  down  which  human  nature  can  run 
smoothly,  trying  to  guide  it  through  its  proper  beds. 
Thanks  in  lieu  of  fees  hardly  swell  a  bank  account, 
yet  I  foresee  that  they  will  mount  up  heavily  when 
I  settle  the  long  columns  of  my  ledger.  Even  if 
I  have  to  leave  the  final  accounting  to  the  Recording 
Angel,  I  have  no  fear  of  the  result  as  regards  this 
man. 

Nothing  human  can  fail  to  interest  him.  He 
lends  the  entire  force  of  his  manhood,  officially  and 
unofficially,  to  the  community  in  which  he  lives,  en- 
tering into  it,  not  in  one  aspect  only  but  in  all,  polit- 
ical, social,  religious,  taking  part  in  every  assembly 
that  is  endeavoring  to  govern,  giving  the  whole 
strength  of  body  and  of  soul  to  civic  need,  as  he  gives 
it  to  any  individual  in  trouble,  —  man,  woman,  or 
child.  He  makes  acquaintance  with  everybody,  is  re- 


166  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

sponsible  for  everybody,  from  the  washerwoman  to 
Billions  and  to  old  lady  Simms,  who  waits  eagerly 
for  his  monthly  call.  I  marvel  at  the  power  this 
one  man's  personality  has  to  knit  the  town  into 
unity;  his  very  faults  and  weaknesses,  which  he  con- 
fesses with  utmost  frankness,  are  a  part  of  his  power, 
strengthening  his  hold  upon  his  neighbors,  as  they 
deepen  his  charm  for  his  friends. 

Young  men  of  Mataquoit  whom  I  have  passed  by 
as  wholly  uninteresting  (alas!  my  old  snobbish  tra- 
dition, my  old  training!)  he  takes  into  a  friendly 
intimacy,  some  even  of  those  who  have  vexed  me 
by  standing  idle  at  the  curbstone,  with  their  hands 
in  their  pockets,  their  hats  on  one  side  of  their  heads. 
Hats  are  set  at  a  better  angle,  hands  come  out  of 
pockets  upon  acquaintance  with  him,  and  I  can- 
not help  thinking  that  a  straighter  thinking  accom- 
panies the  more  erect  posture  that  ensues.  There  is 
a  loveliness  in  his  relation  to  young  men,  in  his  way 
of  making  friends  with  them,  sharing  his  standards 
with  them,  finding  out  their  troubles  and  their  temp- 
tations. It  is  not  didacticism  that  he  offers  them, 
but  friendship. 

When  we  are  together  we  talk  endlessly  about 
people,  about  institutions  and  the  way  in  which  they 
work,  rarely  about  abstract  themes.  My  new  friend 
has  a  wistful  way  of  speaking  about  Christianity 
not  as  a  theology  —  he  cannot  conceive  of  it  as  an 
abstract  theme  —  but  as  a  life  that  has  in  some  way 
missed  being  carried  out  by  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world.  It  is  a  continual,  puzzling  surprise  to  him 
that  people  in  general  do  not  try  to  live  up  to  it, 
that  in  nineteen  hundred  years  it  has  not  come  true. 

When  I  am  with  him  I  hardly  dare  mention  the 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  167 

war.    This  failure  between  the  nations  is  for  him 
a  tragedy  so  deep  that  he  will  not  talk  about  it. 


November  23. 

I  am  feeling  encouraged;  Tim's  tail,  which  moves 
so  inevitably  in  accord  with  my  inner  feelings,  is 
beginning  to  wag  oftener;  to-day  it  even  recorded 
a  stare  of  friendliness  toward  Melton,  the  hardware 
man,  whom  I  have  from  the  first  somewhat  dis- 
liked. In  so  far  as  I  am  a  mere  person  I  care  little 
for  him  still,  but  in  so  far  as  I  am  a  citizen  I  am 
evidently  achieving  a  cordial  feeling  toward  him. 

I  really  miss  this  supreme  means  of  self-expres- 
sion, a  tail,  far  less  than  I  used  to,  now  that  I  have 
Tim's.  Besides  setting  me  an  example  in  displaying 
that  ideal  friendliness  with  human  nature  which  is 
the  basis  of  true  democracy,  he  is  a  great  help  in 
practical  ways,  for  he  often  recognizes  people  when 
I  do  not.  At  his  first  wag,  I  bow,  whether  or  not 
I  know  to  whom  I  am  bowing. 

November  25. 

To-day  I  must  do  a  bit  of  balancing  in  my  ledger, 
to  see  if  these  months  of  troubled  speculation  and  of 
baffled  endeavors  to  help  since  the  day  of  my  ar- 
rival in  Mataquoit  have  brought  me  anything  to  put 
on  the  asset  side.  At  least  they  have  stirred  deeper 
thought  within  me  than  has  ever  been  stirred  be- 
fore ;  they  have  made  me  dig  down  beneath  this  op- 
pressive sense  of  war  to  things  profounder,  searching 
for  fundamental  bases  upon  which  right  relations 
between  man  and  man  may  rest.  That  long  tragedy 
in  many  acts,  of  human  governments,  the  difficulty 


168  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  establishing  right  relations  between  nations  and 
between  individuals,  is  more  real  to  me  than  before. 

Thinking  of  the  immemorial  struggles,  and  of 
the  brave  hopes  with  which  our  forefathers  started 
to  build  a  new  and  better  order,  I  can  but  recognize 
the  fact  that,  in  our  one  hundred  and  forty  years  of 
freedom,  we  are  far  from  having  made  the  progress 
that  we  should  in  the  shaping  and  the  right-ordering 
of  our  national  house  of  life.  The  aspirations  of 
which  they  builded  its  walls  should  have  resulted  in 
a  nobler  structure ;  the  seeds  planted  about  its  door- 
ways should  have  come  to  fairer  flower  long  since. 

A  government  by  the  people,  —  from  the  village 
loafer  by  the  post  office  in  this  present  world  of 
mine,  to  the  delicate-minded  connoisseur  among  his 
choice  buildings  in  that  world  which  I  have  left  be- 
hind me,  how  little  we  have  realized  the  demands  of 
this  brief  Article  hi  our  forefathers'  creed!  The 
present,  in  many  ways  shocking  condition  of  things 
is  wholly  our  own  fault;  we  are  all  guilty  alike  of 
shirking  civic  duty;  the  thought  of  what  we  have 
left  undone  comes  beating  back  upon  my  mind  as 
the  waves  beat  on  the  shore.  Those  heroic  ancestors 
fought  and  bled  to  win  liberty;  we,  their  descend- 
ants, at  least  the  great  majority  of  us,  thereupon 
lie  down  upon  it,  conceiving  it  a  something  secured 
once  for  all,  a  couch  for  our  own  rest. 

It  is  far  from  that;  it  is  a  constant  duty,  an  in- 
cessant achievement,  calling  for  such  effort,  such 
sense  of  the  relation  of  man  to  man  as  few  of  us 
have  had.  No  mere  form  of  government  can  make 
free  those  who  do  not  daily  and  hourly  struggle  to 
make  and  keep  themselves  and  others  free.  What 
care  have  we  taken,  we  citizens  of  many  privileges, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  169 

that  our  best  should  be  winnowed  out  of  our  vast 
fields  of  men  and  sent  to  Washington,  to  Senate  or 
to  the  House,  to  govern  us?  Amused,  apart,  and 
disdainful  of  politics,  we  have  let  many  of  our  cities 
fall  into  the  hands  of  rings,  where  the  corrupt  play 
the  leading  part;  the  citizen  has  made  way,  the 
country  over,  for  the  professional  politician ;  and  we 
smile  in  watching  that  turbulent  race,  which  is  no- 
torious for  being  unable  to  govern  itself,  establishing 
themselves  as  Lords  of  Misrule  among  us.  With 
our  cultured  folk  washing  their  hands  of  civic  duties 
and  responsibilities;  our  artists,  for  the  most  part, 
evading  the  themes  that  would  count  the  most  in 
our  national  life;  our  writers  failing  to  recognize 
their  supreme  duty,  to  guide  the  minds  of  their 
fellow  citizens;  with  those  best  of  citizens,  the 
women,  oppressed  and  counted  out,  —  what  govern- 
ment by  the  people  have  we  achieved? 

As  for  that  next  Article,  —  government  for  the 
people;  we  of  America  have  not  gone  far  in  our 
divinely  appointed  task  of  bringing  justice  down 
from  the  heavens  to  dwell  among  men.  We  have 
let  our  industries  swell  unbelievably  the  criminally 
great  fortunes  of  the  ultra  successful.  We  have  let 
many  a  worker,  in  mine,  sweatshop,  or  dye  factory, 
where  breath  is  poison,  suffer  martyrdom  on  the 
rack  of  our  physical  needs,  of  our  vanities.  We  have 
let  labor  browbeat  us,  paralyzing  our  life,  threaten- 
ing women  and  children  with  cruel  suffering,  in 
order  that  wages  should  rise  at  once.  Keenly  sym- 
pathetic with  many  aspects  of  the  struggle  to  stamp 
out  injustice,  I  find  labor  in  much  of  its  endeavor 
as  narrow,  selfish,  un-American,  as  capital,  in  placing 
its  immediate  profit  before  the  welfare  of  the  whole. 


170  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

We  have  missed  that  unity  of  many  in  one  which 
was  our  forefathers'  hope.  Late  years  have  brought 
unmistakable  evidence  of  decadence  in  our  America, 
an  emergence  of  an  evil  thing  that  our  ancestors 
thought  had  been  left  behind,  class  struggle. 
Whether  imported  from  abroad,  or  of  native  growth, 
it  threatens  the  foundations  of  our  democracy.  How 
have  we  fallen  apart!  Class  against  class,  —  it  is 
an  unthinkable  conflict.  How  can  we  be  brought 
again  to  unity,  to  sense  of  a  common  aim? 


XX 


November  28. 

My  letters  from  Jack,  though  brief  and  sometimes 
so  enigmatic  in  expression  as  to  be  almost  unintel- 
ligible, are  not  infrequent.  Disturbed  by  being 
robbed  of  complete  understanding  through  this  com- 
bination of  slang  and  the  technical  phraseology  of 
athletics,  I  am  assiduously  studying  the  sporting 
pages  of  the  newspapers  and  am  beginning  to  follow 
again  the  intercollegiate  events  on  baseball  and  on 
football  fields,  and  on  the  water,  with  some  glim- 
merings of  comprehension ;  the  phraseology  of  sport 
has  changed  greatly  since  my  day.  Something  of 
the  growth  of  Jack's  mind  creeps  in  between  the 
lines  of  the  letters,  as,  in  my  more  sanguine  mo- 
ments, I  dare  hope  that  something  of  intellectual 
life  in  the  college  creeps  in  between  athletic  happen- 
ings. The  thought  of  the  boy  and  of  what  he  will 
do  is  never  long  absent  from  my  mind  as  I  go  on 
cultivating  the  acquaintance  of  this  neighbor  and 
of  that  in  Mataquoit,  always,  I  dare  say,  with  some 
unconscious  reproach  against  him  in  my  mind  be- 
cause he  is  not  Jack.  It  is  incredible  to  what  ex- 
tent I  miss  the  lad. 

A  recent  note  says  that  a  club  has  been  formed 
by  a  small  group,  himself  among  them,  for  military 
training,  presided  over  by  a  disabled  French  officer, 
but  of  his  purpose  in  joining  he  gives  no  explanation. 


172  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

November  30. 

To-day  my  mind  is  severely  businesslike;  I  have 
been  sending  out  bills,  and  my  mood  is  stern  enough 
for  me  to  come  to  grips  with  practical  suggestions 
for  settling  the  trouble  in  our  national  household. 

Clearly,  we  need  to  get  rid  of  two  extremes;  find- 
ing some  plan  of  doing  away  with  our  two  great  sins 
of  extreme  wealth  and  extreme  poverty,  yet  per- 
mitting individual  responsibility  and  individual  in- 
itiative. I  am  no  politician  or  economist,  but  I  can 
see  a  state,  in  which,  through  huge  taxes  on  large 
possessions,  through  strict  inheritance  laws,  for- 
bidding any  man  to  pass  on  more  than  a  moderate 
sum  to  another,  great  fortunes  would  become  impos- 
sible. One  practical  measure  in  which  I  have  de- 
clared my  faith  by  practice  is  a  limitation  of  in- 
comes. By  the  minimum  wage,  by  careful  legisla- 
tion regarding  conditions  of  work,  poverty,  and  suf- 
fering in  toil  could  be  eliminated,  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  being  left  scope  for  energy,  enterprise, 
originality,  not  stamped  as  by  a  factory  with  utter 
sameness  of  condition,  bound  down  by  unnecessary, 
arbitrary  laws.  We  must  have  always  some  check 
on  man  by  man;  must  have  always  emulation, 
desire  to  equal,  to  excel;  competition  is  involved 
hi  the  very  constitution  of  human  nature. 

Still  it  is  the  old  problem  of  finding  how  to  leave 
man  his  individual  opportunity,  with  the  incentive 
to  individual  effort,  and  yet  protect  the  other  man. 
Of  many  things  I  am  not  sure,  but  I  am  sure  that 
the  greater  amount  of  individual  liberty  that  is  com- 
patible with  righteous  government  the  better. 
Abuses  must  be  reformed,  hardships  of  mine  and 
of  factory  lessened,  but  no  civilization  of  a  formula, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  173 

no  government-ordered  uniform  wealth  and  pros- 
perity can  ever  discover  the  potential  strength  that 
struggle  brings  out.  Struggle  is  the  very  heart  and 
soul  of  life,  rousing  the  energy,  strengthening  the 
fiber  of  soul  and  of  body;  it  is  by  struggle  that  men 
are  made  men. 

December  1. 

A  letter  has  come  from  Katharine,  telling  of  the 
intellectual  and  the  practical  side  of  her  training, 
which  is  well  under  way.  As  regards  the  former, 
she  is  full  of  wonder  and  of  interest  in  learning 
something  of  the  laws  of  life  and  of  growth;  ele- 
mentary facts  of  biology  and  of  physiology  were 
doubtless  ruled  out  of  her  boarding-school  training 
as  improper  for  a  young  lady  to  know.  Billions,  of 
course,  chose  for  his  daughter's  schooling  the  most 
conservative,  most  elegant,  most  futile  ancient  es- 
tablishment he  could  find.  I  am  enormously  pleased 
by  my  first  missive  from  Katharine;  there  is  not  a 
note  of  self-consciousness  in  it;  there  is  much  of 
herself  as  a  potential  nurse,  but  nothing  of  herself 
as  an  important  young  person,  only  a  touch  of  im- 
patience in  regard  to  the  amount  of  theory  that  has 
to  be  learned,  the  number  of  practical  things  that 
must  be  known,  before  one  may  go  to  France.  It  is 
amusing  to  see  how  swiftly  and  directly  her  mind 
works ;  feminine  intuition  has  kept  her  from  all  hesi- 
tation since  she  caught  her  first  glimpse  of  the  vast- 
ness  of  the  task  to  be  done;  Jack,  it  is  clear,  is  still 
a  bit  at  sea  in  regard  to  the  next  step. 

Katharine  writes  gleefully  that  she  has  learned 
how  to  put  on  bandages  and  that  she  has  scrubbed 
a  floor.  Alas,  poor  Billions! 


174  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

December  3. 

Misgivings  cut  now  and  then  across  my  increasing 
belief  in  people  as  fit  to  play  their  part  in  the  great 
game  of  democracy.  One  thing  impresses  me  here 
among  the  street-corner  and  the  sugar-barrel  orators, 
as  it  used  to  impress  me  at  the  club:  the  enormous 
number  of  critics  our  democracy  has  produced,  as 
compared  with  the  number  of  actors.  Old  Silas 
Todd,  who  is  supported  by  that  hard-working  seam- 
stress, his  wife,  and  Sam  Thatch,  the  village  ne'er- 
do-well  of  seventy,  can  tell  just  how  to  run  a  re- 
public and  how  to  carry  on  the  European  war.  From 
the  counter  of  the  village  store  I  have  heard  Joffre, 
Hindenberg,  and  Haig  out-generalled,  and  Lin- 
coln outdone  in  statesmanship.  These  sidewalk 
talkers  who  prefer  being  leaders  of  modern  thought 
to  doing  an  honest  day's  work  give  pause  for  thought 
as  regards  self-government. 

As  I  meditate  upon  various  aspects  of  our  falter- 
ing democracy  I  find  that  a  great  part  of  our  failure 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  all  want  to  be  critics  in- 
stead of  creators.  Every  man  is,  without  lifting  a 
finger,  a  peerless  statesman  in  his  own  opinion; 
every  man  in  office  is  a  failure;  all  men  know  how 
it  should  be  done,  —  this  task  which  they  make  no 
attempt  to  do.  Cranberries  and  critics  were  ever 
the  New  England  crop! 

This  bitter  New  England  tongue,  bitter  upon  the 
street  corners  even  as  the  east  wind  is  bitter!  Is 
there  cause  and  effect  here?  Does  the  east  wind 
blow  in  this  special  state  of  mind  with  the  fog  from 
the  sea?  One  might  think  so,  were  not  all  parts  of 
the  country  alike  in  this  effortless  superiority  of 
"Words,  words,  words." 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  175 

We  have  little  thought,  apparently,  in  denouncing 
our  public  officials  and  other  active  citizens,  that 
the  fact  that  the  other  man  is  hard  at  work  in  office 
or  in  public  meeting,  and  most  of  us  idle  on  porches, 
shows  us  failures.  This  smoky  twilight  omniscience 
of  the  street  corners  betrays  our  lack  of  constructive 
power,  our  failure  to  realize  how  much  is  asked  of 
us,  how  great  an  effort  we  must  make  if  we  are  to 
become  citizens  of  a  republic.  The  man  we  de- 
nounce is  at  least  trying  to  do  something,  has  done 
something.  Even  if  he  fails,  he  is  better  than  we, 
for  he  has  acted. 

Our  chief  trouble  is  that  every  man  among  us 
thinks  that  the  wrong  is  with  the  other  man,  not 
himself.  In  this  great  and  searching  creed  of  democ- 
racy he  is  unable  to  see  the  point  that  every  man 
is  responsible  for  all  that  happens.  I  must  try  to 
draw  these  men  from  their  carping  and  pulling  down 
and  set  them  at  building.  ...  I  must  try  to  draw 
myself,  for,  among  those  who  are  omnisciently  in- 
active, I  am  the  chief  of  sinners. 

December  8. 

These  cold  winter  days  bring  me,  in  spite  of  the 
thermometer,  a  certain  warmth  about  the  heart. 
Many  of  my  neighbors  have  learned  to  stop  and 
toast  their  fingers  at  my  open  fire ;  sitting  here  with 
them,  I  dream  happily,  in  spite  of  harrowing  tidings 
from  the  front,  of  a  great  human  hearthstone  where 
the  nations  may  gather  in  friendliness.  If  the 
chasm  between  different  social  castes  in  this  demo- 
cratic country  can  be  bridged,  anything  can  be 
achieved  in  the  way  of  overcoming  social  barriers. 

It  is  impossible  to  keep  from  realizing  that  I  have 


176  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

become  a  privileged  character  in  Mataquoit,  despite 
my  past,  in  regard  to  which  there  is  still  great  un- 
certainty, despite  my  humble  calling,  despite  the 
suggestion  in  regard  to  my  being  a  German  spy. 

Much  of  this  I  owe  to  Jack,  partly  to  his  cham- 
pionship, partly  to  his  companionship,  for  Mata- 
quoit has  a  great  liking  for  Jack  and  confidence  in 
his  judgment.  Largely  through  him,  I  think,  I  have 
become  friend  and  adviser  of  many  people  whose 
acquaintance  I  could  never  have  won  by  myself.  Not 
only  in  my  shop,  but  in  the  library  and  on  the  vil- 
lage street,  I  am  sought  out  by  men  who  are  be- 
ginning to  think  it  worth  while  to  ask  what  I  think, 
what  I  would  do. 

Cyrus  Weeks,  the  plumber,  wanted  to  know  what 
my  next  move  would  be  if  I  were  in  command  of 
the  British  on  the  Somme  front. 

I  could  not  tell  him. 

Abraham  Jencks,  of  the  rural  delivery,  wanted  to 
know  what  I  would  do  with  the  headstall  of  his  old 
gray  horse. 

I  could  tell  him. 

The  hours  that  I  especially  enjoy  are  the  hours 
when  Leavitt,  the  postmaster,  Joe  Hincks,  the  po- 
liceman, Martin,  the  grain  merchant,  with  a  farmer 
who  has  come  creaking  in  over  the  snow  in  an  an- 
cient cutter,  or  others  like  them,  join  me  at  my 
shop  fireside  and  talk,  less  of  the  war  than  of  the 
days  to  be.  Among  these  men,  these  plain  inhabi- 
tants of  a  plain  town,  I  have  a  number  of  real 
friends;  together  we  decide  what  our  government 
should  do;  what  institutions  we  should  have,  and 
how  they  should  be  managed.  We  establish  our 
ideal  State  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  for  the  con- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  177 

viction  that  America  has  a  peculiar  part  to  play  in 
the  future  of  the  world  is  strong  upon  us  all.  If 
America  cannot  solve  the  problems  that  vex  men's 
souls,  carrying  human  hope  to  higher  ground  than  it 
has  reached  before,  what  country  can?  Never  did 
statesman,  politician,  or  philosopher,  evolve  a  fairer 
republic  that  we  have  evolved  out  of  our  minds  and 
a  little  tobacco  smoke. 

Once  or  twice  Jack  has  been  with  us;  he  sits  and 
listens,  and  sometimes  grins  impertinently;  I  find 
that  I  can  build  the  future  better  when  he  is  here. 
Sometimes  Alexander  Wallace  drops  in,  and  per- 
haps makes  a  suggestion,  or,  with  a  twinkle,  hints 
at  possible  limitations  of  humanity  which  I,  in  spite 
of  my  new  schooling,  am  prone  to  forget. 

The  chief  aim  in  all  this  discussion  is  to  see  if  we 
cannot  dig  deeper  into  the  soil  of  human  nature 
than  this  demand  for  rights,  down  to  those  roots 
and  sources  of  true  citizenship  which  mean  desire 
for  service.  In  our  new  republic,  it  would  be  each 
man's  first  job,  after  governing  himself,  or  while 
governing  himself,  to  help  govern  his  country.  He 
should  know  that  there  can  be  no  rule  of  justice 
among  men  unless  each  man  does  his  bit  and  keeps 
on  doing  it.  For  government  is  a  process,  not  a 
state;  a  life,  an  activity,  not  an  established  fact  to 
be  accepted  as  finished;  there  is  no  possibility  of 
success  if  we  merely  work  out  a  constitution  and 
stop,  congratulating  ourselves  on  great  achievement. 
A  man  must  enlist  in  a  democracy  as  he  would  en- 
list in  an  army,  pledging  his  utmost  service  for  the 
period  of  the  war,  which  means  his  lifetime. 

It  is  easy  to  see  the  glory  of  that  for  which  our 
forefathers  fought:  freedom  for  the  individual,  the 


178  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

open  road,'  the  chance  for  man  to  find  his  destiny 
with  no  man's  shackles  on  arm  or  ankle;  but  the 
weak  part,  if  not  in  this  dream  of  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity,  at  least  in  our  fulfilment  of  that 
dream,  has  been  in  the  matter  of  fraternity.  Over 
the  ground  of  doing  justice  to  one's  neighbor  in  ma- 
terial things  I  have  gone  many  times;  while  my 
neighbors  discuss  the  problem,  an  undercurrent  of 
thought  runs  on  within  me  regarding  a  finer  justice 
that  should  be  added  to  the  other.  In  a  democracy, 
a  man's  inmost  and  uttermost  ideal  for  himself  he 
should  insist  on  making  good  for  his  fellow  men  also. 
The  human  personality,  taken  by  itself,  is  a  cul-de- 
sac;  non-civic  virtues  are  questionable  virtues;  non- 
civic-ideals  are  sterile  ideals;  every  lofty  aspiration 
unshared  becomes  a  canker ;  as  a  repentant  member 
of  a  privileged  class  I  write  these  words.  My  in- 
dictment against  myself  is  an  indictment  against 
most  of  the  thinkers,  the  idealists  I  have  known 
during  my  lifetime.  I  have  buried  myself  hereto- 
fore in  too  prolonged  contemplation  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  excellence,  in  art,  in  literature,  in  human 
conduct,  with  little  or  no  thought  of  its  application 
to  the  turmoil  of  human  life.  It  is  as  if  one  had 
worshiped  a  pagan  god  in  and  for  itself,  with  no 
consideration  of  the  power  of  that  duty  to  bless  the 
people  at  large.  The  secret  of  successful  idealism 
is  a  right  adjustment  between  the  passion  for  ex- 
cellence and  a  recognition  of  human  nature,  its  limi- 
tations, its  possibilities,  —  a  learning  to  share  the 
passion  for  excellence  with  the  common  man.  Ideals 
must  not  exist  in  the  void,  must  not  be  cherished 
in  and  for  themselves;  they  must  make  good  in 
the  stuff  of  human  life. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  179 

Philosopher,  scholar,  artist,  writer,  in  a  demo- 
cratic age,  should  remember  himself  always  in  the 
presence  of  the  eternal  verities,  but  also  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  immediate  verities  of  home  and  country. 
His  form  of  expression  should  seek  high  service ;  not 
that  he  should  treat  always  of  political  themes,  but 
that  he  should  so  work  as  to  make  his  vision  clear 
to  an  increasing  number  of  men.  All,  of  whatsoever 
trades,  professions,  lines  of  business,  should  re- 
member first  of  all  that  they  are  citizens,  but  espe- 
cially all  artists,  keeping  in  mind  those  old  days  of 
the  highest  glory  of  Greece,  of  Renaissance  Italy, 
when  the  great  arts  of  sculpture  and  painting  were 
a  vital  part  of  the  life  of  the  people.  Perhaps  upon 
the  writer  devolves  the  deepest  responsibility  of  all. 
My  conviction  deepens  that,  unless  those  who  have 
intellectual  power,  spiritual  insight,  artistic  inspira- 
tion, bend  their  whole  souls  to  sharing  the  best 
that  is  in  them  with  the  masses,  civilization  is  lost, 
with  all  that  is  finer  and  higher  in  expression  of  the 
life  of  man  swept  down  into  oblivion,  trampled 
under  foot. 

As  I  say  these  wise  things  I  am  put  to  shame  by 
Alexander  Wallace,  who  listens  in  the  greatest  ad- 
miration and  tells  me  that  he  thinks  my  ideas  won- 
derful, —  he  who  has  for  a  lifetime  been  living  these 
ideas  unconsciously.  In  my  next  extemporaneous 
lecture  I  am  going  to  sketch  his  character  as  I  read 
it,  and  am  going  to  say  that  of  such  souls  are  built 
the  walls  of  the  perfect  city.  I  warrant  that  he 
will  express  a  wish  that  he  might  meet  this  man  of 
whom  I  am  talking;  nor  will  the  other  people  who 
listen,  I  fear,  realize  that  I  am  merely  describing  one 
who  sits  among  us. 


XXI 

December  10. 

Jack  home  for  a  week-end,  with  more  time  at  my 
disposal  than  is  usual  on  these  infrequent  visits. 
Glorious  December  weather,  with  hoar  frost  spark- 
ling in  the  mornings  on  every  twig  and  every  brown 
grass  blade.  I  did  not  know  that  the  boy  was  to 
be  here  until  he  tapped  on  my  pane;  then  my  awl 
went  in  one  direction,  my  needle  in  another,  —  it 
is  weeks  since  I  have  had  a  holiday. 

We  took  a  long  walk  together,  Jack,  Tim,  and  I, 
passing  Round  Towers,  with  its  boarded  windows, 
its  muffled  vines  and  shrubs,  with  the  winter  sea 
beating  at  the  base  of  the  desolate  cliff. 

My  remark  that  a  recent  letter  from  Katharine 
stated  that  she  hoped  to  sail  next  summer  for  France 
brought  no  response;  and  Jack  took  but  an  absent- 
minded  part  in  the  discussion  that  followed  re- 
garding athletics,  ideal  governments,  and  our  hope 
of  ever  outgrowing  war. 

Suddenly  he  turned. 

"Do  you  think  I  ought  to  enlist  with  the  Can- 
adians?" 

"It  is  for  you  to  decide,  not  me,"  I  told  him. 

"You  might  just  tell  me  what  you  think." 

"I  promised  your  mother  not  to  influence  you  in 
any  way." 

"But  how  do  you  feel  about  it?" 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  181 

"That,  my  young  friend,  is  something  which  I 
shall  never  confide  to  you." 

"You  silly  old  Sphinx!"  said  Jack,  slapping  me  on 
the  shoulder;  "as  if  I  didn't  know  perfectly  well 
what  you  think!" 

I  wonder  if  there  was  ever  a  man  who  said  he 
was  going  to  withhold  his  opinion,  and  then  really 
concealed  it?  I  certainly  discoursed  at  some  length 
in  regard  to  a  number  of  matters  on  the  way  home, 
but  I  am  not  very  clear  as  to  what  I  said.  It  is 
difficult  for  me  to  confide  even  to  my  journal-ledger 
the  joy  I  feel  in  watching  the  swift  unfolding  of 
Jack's  nature;  it  was  a  boy  who  sat  in  stockinged 
feet  in  my  shop  while  I  mended  his  shoe  on  the 
summer  day  when  I  first  saw  him;  it  was  a  man 
who  walked  with  me  to-day  on  the  rock  path  by 
the  shore.  So  right,  so  vital  is  his  growth,  that,  as 
I  look  at  him  with  the  wakening  sense  of  his  share 
in  the  work  of  the  world  manifest  in  his  eyes,  he 
seems  God's  forgiveness  to  me  for  my  past  years, 
with  their  negligences,  omissions,  exemptions  from 
service.  I  have  kept  the  promise  not  to  urge  him 
to  go,  but  from  the  first  I  have  hoped  that  he  would 
not  make  the  great  refusal. 

What  he  said  to  me  shows  that  he  knows  my 
mind  perfectly,  and  I  have  had  a  bad  hour  debating 
the  question  as  to  whether  I  am  right  or  wrong  in 
standing,  against  his  parents'  will,  by  the  new  and 
finer  desire  which  I  can  see  is  growing  in  Jack's  soul. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  his  manhood  would  be 
dwarfed  if  this  were  stifled,  but  his  parents  are  his 
parents;  life  is  sadly  entangled. 

Tim  lays  his  head  upon  my  knee,  as  if  wishing  to 
help  me  in  my  predicament. 


182  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

I  envy  Tim  his  decision  of  character;  he  never 
finds  himself  in  a  mental  dilemma.  He  is  a  very 
positive  and  decided  character;  if  he  wishes  to  bark, 
he  barks  sharply,  emphatically ;  there  is  no  mistak- 
ing his  meaning.  If  he  wishes  to  be  friendly,  there  is 
always  a  little,  ingratiating  whimper  and  caress  from 
a  swift,  soft  tongue.  We  have  lost  much  in  losing 
instinct  and  are  as  yet  far  from  fully  attaining 
reason. 

Now,  however  much  in  this  new  life  of  mine  I 
want  to  bark,  angrily,  defiantly,  definitively,  I  can 
not.  I  have  a  wretched  way  of  being  polite,  even 
when  I  do  not  want  to  be.  I  take  foolish  refuge  in 
a  gentle  irony,  very  cutting  indeed,  but,  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  wholly  uncomprehended  by  the  person 
to  whom  it  is  addressed.  My  Damascus  blade  runs 
through  and  through  the  person  who  needs  to  be 
exterminated,  and  out  again,  without  drawing  blood. 
He  never  notices  his  demise. 

There  is  one  deep  growl  which  I  envy  Tim,  —  an 
ominous,  throaty  ultimatum,  of  which  he  is  as  prodi- 
gal as  was  Germany  of  ultimatums  in  the  early  days 
of  August,  1914.  There  are  innumerable  occasions 
when  I  could  use  an  expression  of  this  kind  to  ad- 
mirable advantage  if  I  could  but  command  it. 

Then  there  is  his  excited,  yelping,  tumbling-over- 
one-another  series  of  barks,  expressing  extreme,  ex- 
cited joy,  tumultuous  joy.  It  is  not  that  I  wish 
that  I  could  do  just  this;  rather,  that  I  regret  that 
life  with  its  varied  experiences  has  never  brought 
me  a  moment  when  I  needed  to  bark  like  this,  a 
moment  so  joyous  that  I  needs  must  burst  unless  I 
express  myself,  choking,  because  there  is  not  time 
enough  to  voice  my  joy.  ...  If  the  course  of 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  183 

Jack's  life  runs  as  it  should,  perhaps  such  a  moment 
will  come. 

December  15. 

The  stream  of  life  in  Mataquoit  flows  on  through 
shop,  and  field,  and  roadway,  through  church, 
market,  town  meeting,  elections,  tea  parties,  so- 
ciables. As  the  weeks  drift  past,  so  much  alike  that 
I  find  little  in  them  to  chronicle,  I  am  aware  of  a 
growing  insight  into  the  civic  life  of  the  place,  into 
the  activities,  the  indifferences  of  the  citizens  of 
Mataquoit,  as  well  as  of  a  growing  acquaintance- 
ship with  individuals.  With  a  deepening  interest 
in  people  comes  a  deepening  constructive  idea  of 
democracy,  in  spite  of  moments  of  discouragement. 

And  all  the  time,  through  gray  days  and  through 
days  of  sun,  the  war  rolls  on,  sweeping  more  and 
more  of  human  life  into  its  swift  current.  When 
will  the  two  streams  meet?  For  the  handwriting  on 
my  wall  at  night  from  the  bare  branches  of  trees 
tells  me  that  we  are  irresistibly,  inevitably,  being 
swept  in.  There  is  growing  apprehension  in  regard 
to  it;  street  corner  and  post-office  discussions,  the 
drift  of  chance  remarks  in  my  shop  doubtless  register 
faithfully  the  increasing  concern  of  the  whole 
country.  Rankin  of  the  drug  store  shakes  his  head 
over  his  bottles;  Banks,  our  Congressman,  looks 
mysteriously  important;  young  men  of  Mataquoit 
begin  to  talk  of  the  fighting  as  if  it  concerned  them. 
Meanwhile  here,  as  in  the  great  social  centers,  if 
reports  be  true,  there  is  excess  of  gayety,  a  feverish 
activity  in  the  matter  of  organizing  amusements. 

Until  further  developments  I  hold  myself  sternly 
to  my  task  of  understanding  my  neighbor  and  of 
mending  his  shoes. 


184  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

I  have  not  forgotten  the  virtue  raking  article 
which  I  long  ago  resolved  to  write,  but  which  I  have 
had  difficulty  in  beginning,  because  my  list  of  vir- 
tuous citizens  refused  to  grow  sufficiently.  Perhaps 
I  lack  eyes,  or  opportunity,  to  see  the  services  ren- 
dered ;  perhaps  the  old  inhabitants  of  the  town,  from 
whom  I  constantly  seek  information  in  regard  to 
the  history  of  Mataquoit,  have  better  memories  for 
people's  delinquencies  than  for  their  achievements. 

Alexander  Wallace  is  helping  me  here;  he  was 
telling  me  last  night  of  the  long  and  distinguished 
service  of  Andrew  Martin,  the  grain  merchant,  on 
the  school  board,  a  hard  and  thankless  task,  gal- 
lantly carried  out  through  many  years,  with  small 
recognition  from  any  one,  fighting  corrupt  local 
politics  and  keeping  high  the  standard  in  the  matter 
of  teachers  in  the  schools  and  of  text  books.  My 
negligent  friend,  Abel  Marks,  the  postman,  once 
nearly  lost  his  life,  it  seems,  getting  the  mail  across 
the  marsh  at  flood  time,  when  the  bridge  over  the 
river  was  broken.  I  learned  that  Joe  Hincks,  the 
policeman,  though  he  does  accept  free  lunches  at 
the  restaurant,  and  "soft  drinks"  that  are  perhaps 
not  over  soft  at  the  drug  store,  has  shown  great 
heroism  on  two  occasions  when  there  has  been  riot- 
ing in  the  town.  Melton,  the  hardware  man,  whose 
heart  I  had  thought  as  hard  as  his  own  tenpenny 
nails,  failed  half  a  dozen  years  ago  because  of  finan- 
cial assistance  given  to  Noah  Price,  the  grocer;  Mel- 
ton knew  that  others  were  involved  with  Price  and 
tried  to  save  the  town. 

These  names  I  am  jotting  down  on  the  asset  side 
of  my  ledger,  while  I  wait  for  others  that  I  know 
will  come,  for  the  memory  of  Alexander  Wallace  is 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  185 

a  white  list  of  citizens;  no  good  deed  is  forgotten; 
no  right  attitude  is  unrecorded  there.  The  unsus- 
pected heroisms  and  loyalties  of  which  I  am  hearing 
confirm  my  conviction  that  mankind  takes  a  deal  of 
knowing;  that  governments  must  find  ways  of  reach- 
ing down  for  their  basis  to  the  ultimate  sources  of 
strength  in  the  human  heart. 

December  23. 

Many  days  drift  without  an  entry  in  my  ledger; 
they  are  all  busy  days.  Still  I  go  humbly,  feeling  my 
way  along  the  tangled  paths  of  human  life,  consid- 
ering, weighing,  learning.  It  seems  odd  for  one  of  my 
training  and  tradition  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  Tom 
Hanks,  the  ragman,  but,  metaphorically  of  course, 
I  do,  for  I  want  to  know  how  his  mind  works,  what 
impulses  quicken  him  to  action,  and  I  do  not  want 
to  know  by  the  modern  psychology  method.  If 
these  makers  of  new  political  theories  would  cease 
setting  forth  complete  theories  of  social  and  political 
regeneration,  worked  out  in  the  void;  if  they  would 
study  human  motive  in  the  concrete,  perhaps  they 
could  find  some  programme  that  would  work.  They 
should  scrutinize  humanity  with  all  the  care  of  the 
poet,  novelist,  or  dramatist,  who  study  with  imagi- 
native understanding,  that  they  may  fashion  their 
works  of  art  after  the  very  pattern  of  life.  We  have 
had,  helping  or  hindering  government,  theorists  of 
all  kinds,  scientists,  economists,  psychologists,  — 
analysts  all;  God  give  us  for  civic  guidance  a  race 
of  artists,  with  divining  insight,  who  see,  feel,  create 
in  the  light  of  human  nature! 

If  the  political  economists  of  the  late  eighteenth 
century  made  the  mistake  of  conceiving  man  as  all 


186  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

stomach,  what  mistake  are  contemporary  theorists 
making?  Our  communist  friends  who  conceive  him 
as  something  of  a  bodiless  automaton  which  will 
work  with  automatic  correctness  when  once  started, 
and  who  fancy  that  he  will  put  forth  for  some  ab- 
stract whole  the  effort  that  he  will  put  forth  for 
wife  and  home  and  family,  are  trying  to  write  in  a 
language  whose  very  alphabet  they  have  never 
learned.  Life  for  the  normal  man  spells  wife  and 
child  and  home,  his  own  home,  —  not  the  state's, 
not  the  government's.  For  these  sacred  three  he 
will  offer  up  all  that  is  in  him.  The  only  thing 
that  will  stir  the  ragman  to  any  effort  whatsoever 
is  his  "old  woman's"  hunger;  the  commune  of  Mata- 
quoit  has  never  succeeded  in  making  him  work.  Nor 
do  I  see  my  friends,  Abraham  Jencks  of  the  rural 
delivery,  or  Enoch  Ames,  the  truckman,  or  even  that 
official  of  the  community,  Joe  Hincks,  the  police- 
man, delivering  joyously  at  the  town  hall  for  com- 
mon use,  as  they  deliver  at  their  own  doorways, 
those  garments  and  provisions  which  they  have 
earned  for  their  own,  in  obedience  to  the  behest 
which  nature  has  laid  upon  them. 

Government  must  be  built  up  on  the  whole  of  a 
man,  recognizing  all  powers  and  all  aspects  of  his 
nature,  including  the  primal  emotions,  giving  scope 
for  all,  challenging  all.  They  reckon  ill  who,  in  de- 
vising systems  of  rule,  leave  out  an  understanding 
of  human  beings  and  of  motives  which  actuate  them. 
As  I  pass  in  review  the  most  extreme  of  the  new 
schemes  which  I  have  been  studying,  I  wonder  on 
what  they  have  fixed  their  eyes,  these  theorists  who 
evolved  them;  certainly  not  on  men.  I,  for  one, 
must  think  of  governments  in  terms  of  human  na- 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  187 

ture,  not  of  mathematical  or  pseudo-scientific  ab- 
stractions. No  social  or  political  order  can  flourish 
which  does  not  engage  the  deepest  affection,  the 
profoundest  emotion,  of  human  kind.  If  we  ignore 
this,  if  we  fail  to  capitalize  the  deepest  and  the  best, 
what  lasting  foundation  has  the  state? 

God  forbid  that  I  should  plead  for  a  selfish  order; 
my  hope  looks  forward  rather  to  a  state  of  develop- 
ment in  which  unselfish  action  marks  what  a  man 
wants  to  do,  not  what  he  is  driven  to  do.  Out  of 
normal  human  lives  and  affections  grow  larger  un- 
derstandings; most  men  try  to  learn  how  to  grow 
into  friendliness  with  their  neighbors;  common  ex- 
perience should  give  us  the  key  to  the  solution  of 
the  larger  problem.  To  learn  to  tolerate  my  neigh- 
bor's creed,  and  perhaps  half  sympathize  with  it,  at 
least  to  sympathize  with  him  in  holding  it;  to  un- 
derstand him  as  a  man,  —  there  is  my  citizen's  task ; 
there  is  the  attitude  that  should  be  preserved  in 
national  and  in  international  relations.  Life  should 
mean  a  constantly  enlarging  circle  of  sympathies, 
of  voluntary  disinterested  action ;  man  by  man,  na- 
tion by  nation,  we  should  creep  into  larger  under- 
standing. 

Life  should  mean  this;  why  doesn't  it? 

Christmas  Day. 

Enormously  pleased  by  the  gift  of  a  pair  of  socks 
of  her  own  knitting  from  Grandmother  Brown,  with 
a  card  bringing  greeting,  and  the  simple  statement: 
"One  hundred  and  thirty-first  pair."  Now  what 
does  she  mean  by  this?  She  told  me  that  she  was 
knitting  socks  for  soldiers;  and  I  think  she  may 
intend  a  delicate  suggestion  —  it  would  not  be  be- 


188  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

yond  her  —  that  she  counts  me  too  a  soldier  in  the 
war  of  service  to  humanity.  I  put  them  on,  feeling 
like  a  knight  of  old  with  a  lady's  token  of  favor,  and 
I  am  wearing  them  in  celebration  of  the  day,  though 
I  am  not  used  to  woolen  socks,  and  they  somewhat 
annoy  my  feet. 

For  the  rest,  I  had  a  sunny  note  from  Katharine 
and  a  half  hour  with  Jack,  enough  to  make  any 
man's  Christmas  day. 

Partaking  of  Christmas  turkey,  cranberry,  and 
mince  pie,  and  all  the  "fixin's"  of  an  old-fashioned 
New  England  dinner,  with  the  Widow  Frayne  and 
five  of  her  relatives,  I  found  genuine  pleasure  in 
coming  into  contact  with  the  so-called  plain  people 
at  a  moment  when  heightened  feeling  perhaps  re- 
veals deeper  aspects  of  personality  than  do  the 
casual  contacts  of  every  day.  Christmas  is  not  a 
bad  day  on  which  to  realize  that  it  is  growing  harder 
and  harder  as  time  goes  on  to  keep  one's  prejudices. 
I  find  myself  outgrowing  cherished  dislikes;  my 
slow-growing  appreciations  mark  new  discoveries  in 
the  El  Dorado  of  human  nature. 

Yet  this  is  a  fighting  Christmas,  which  brings  no 
truce  upon  the  battle  field.  We  have  heard  much 
of  the  will  to  war;  what  might  not  be  accomplished 
by  a  universal  will  to  peace,  a  world-wide  determina- 
tion to  get  on  with  one's  fellows,  at  any  cost  of 
effort? 


XXII 

December  29. 

I  have  a  curious  realization  in  these  days,  as  my 
thought  clarifies  somewhat  in  regard  to  matters  so- 
cial and  political,  that  my  instinctive  desire  to  draw 
nearer  my  kind,  to  study  men  and  women  in  order 
to  do  my  work  intelligently  as  a  citizen,  was  a  sub- 
conscious protest  against  that  which  I  have  come 
to  recognize  as  the  greatest  menace  of  our  day,  the 
menace  of  collectivism.  Feeling,  perhaps  half 
blindly,  led  me  to  a  goal  which  my  intellect  has 
reached  by  slow  and  careful  process  through  many 
hours  of  work  with  books,  and  many  hours  of  hard 
thought  by  my  bench,  my  fireside,  or  by  the  sea. 

A  something  invaluable  in  our  old  civilization  is 
passing;  the  most  precious  thing  in  all  the  universe 
is  being  crushed,  individuality.  From  the  mob,  with 
its  ugly  throwing  of  personal  accountability  for 
crime  upon  the  whole  body,  through  strikes,  where 
a  multitude  of  men  perform  cruelties  that  no  one 
of  them  would  do  alone,  through  many  of  the  deeds 
of  the  proverbially  soulless  corporations,  on  to  the 
world  of  thought  and  of  much  mistaken  social 
idealism,  the  tendency  is  to  shift  responsibility  from 
the  individual  to  the  mass.  I  fear  the  collectivism, 
both  practical  and  theoretical,  with  its  lessening 
sense  of  the  weight  of  individual  character  in  public 
and  private  affairs,  and,  in  the  world  of  thought, 
its  increasing  emphasis  on  externals,  on  government. 


190  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

The  "basic  assumption,"  a  friend  tells  me,  of  so- 
cialism is  "that  individual  action  is  hopeless  to 
remedy  social  wrongs.  The  point  of  all  socialist 
ideas  is  that  collective  action  must  attack  collective 
evils.  Christianity,  on  the  other  hand,  does  lay 
primary  stress  on  personal  action." 

This  "basic  assumption"  is  to  me  a  negation  of 
all  history,  all  finer  experience,  a  negation  of  Chris- 
tianity itself,  which,  since  its  coming,  has  put  the 
eternal  obligation  of  individual  act  and  choice  upon 
every  human  soul-  It  condemns  a  doctrine  toward 
which  I  have  had  many  kindly  thoughts;  my  so- 
cialist friend  is  the  first  who  has  fully  revealed  the 
weakness  at  its  core.  Not  thus  can  we  be  absolved 
from  our  individual  responsibility,  or  evade  the  task 
which  the  Lord  our  God  has  put  upon  us  in  calling 
us  into  life;  not  thus  can  we  escape  the  high  behest 
of  Christianity,  to  develop  to  the  utmost  disinter- 
ested personality.  This  drawing  nearer  of  humanity 
in  recent  days  means  great  gain,  yet  something  is 
being  threatened  which  may  outweigh  the  gain, — 
loss  of  a  sense  of  personal  accountability,  both  as 
regards  a  man's  conduct  in  itself  and  as  it  affects  his 
neighbor.  For  individual  conscience  there  is  no 
equivalent  in  the  universe;  the  conscience  of  the 
state  is  no  substitute  for  one's  own. 

January  15,  1917. 

We  are  reading,  my  friends  and  I,  in  the  leisure 
hours  which  grow  more  numerous  in  winter,  and 
especially  in  our  long  evenings;  the  questions  that 
these  men  ask  are  quickening  once  more  my  interest 
in  books.  Our  Carnegie  library  affords  a  not  despi- 
cable shelf  of  volumes  dealing  with  theories  of  gov- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  191 

ernment,  new  and  old,  —  not  only  theories  but 
dreams.  For  whatever  else  we  need  I  send  to  my 
bookseller;  the  rough  shelves  which  are  gradually 
enroaching  upon  the  wall  space  intended  for  shoe 
and  leather  are  filled  to  overflowing.  The  racy  com- 
ments of  these  men  who  read,  or  listen  —  for  I  drop 
my  awl  at  times  to  read  aloud  —  show  that  the  in- 
tellectual freedom  for  which  our  forefathers  fought 
has  justified  itself  in  independence  of  judgment. 

As  we  plan  for  the  future  I  confess  to  great  diffi- 
culty in  working  out  our  Utopia;  most  dreams  of 
this  fail  to  satisfy;  that  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  in 
particular,  has  always  filled  me  with  horror,  in  spite 
of  my  entire  sympathy  with  the  author  as  regards 
contempt  for  wealth  and  jewels,  and  as  regards  a 
profound  hope  for  justice  for  all  men.  That  state- 
regulated  existence  where  all  men  dress  alike,  marry 
at  the  same  age  as  directed,  live  in  houses  exactly 
similar,  in  those  towns  as  alike  as  peas  in  a  pod, 
pursuing  their  uniform  occupations  just  so  many 
hours  a  day,  suggests  to  me  a  monotony  of  horror 
that  Dante  might  well  have  imagined  as  the  inner- 
most circle  of  hell.  Later  theories  of  justice  for 
mankind  coming  through  absolute  uniformity  of  life 
are  less  extreme,  but  all  tend  toward  this;  the 
Utopia  stands  to  me  as  a  signpost  of  warning,  say- 
ing :  "Salvation  does  not  lie  this  way."  Nothing  has 
ever  been  harder  for  mankind  to  imagine  than  an 
endurable  millennium,  and  nobody  has  yet  suggested 
one,  though  I  must  declare  my  preference  for  the 
older  dream  of  the  lion  and  the  lamb  lying  down 
together  over  any  of  the  communistic  or  socialistic 
millenniums  pictured  in  any  book  of  to-day.  At  least 
it  was  lion  and  lamb,  not  creatures  compounded  of 


192  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  two  in  unnatural  identity,  with  all  distinctive 
differences  wiped  out.  Respect  was  paid  to  individu- 
ality in  that  dream  of  an  ideal  future. 

The  civilization  of  the  narrow  formula  seems  a 
contradiction  of  nature  itself,  of  the  very  law  of 
growth,  which  means,  in  every  phase  of  life,  con- 
stantly increasing  differentiation,  no  crystal,  no 
snowflake,  no  flower  petal,  no  human  finger  print 
being  exactly  like  another,  the  perfecting  of  the 
individual  being  the  end  toward  which  all  natural 
life  tends.  Any  alleged  progressive  scheme  of  gov- 
ernment which  leads  to  sameness  of  life  and  habit, 
reducing  humanity  to  pattern,  to  one  dull  gray  uni- 
form of  mental  wear,  threatens  that  development  of 
individuality  which  is  the  supreme  aim  of  human 
aspiration  and  the  secret  of  human  growth.  It  is 
the  machine,  not  life,  which  produces  an  endless 
succession  of  similar  products.  If,  in  nature,  all 
development  means  a  more  and  more  subtle  defining 
of  individuality,  one  might  almost  say  of  personality 
in  things,  along  the  infinite  ways  of  endless  differen- 
tation,  the  higher  hope  for  the  human  race  would 
seem  to  me  to  point  toward  a  world  of  beings  per- 
fected into  utmost  difference,  living  in  a  higher  har- 
mony than  could  come  from  blurring  or  blotting  out 
distinctions. 

Searching  socialistic  and  communistic  theories  old 
and  new,  I  find  that  these  doctrines  make  the  prin- 
ciple of  American  government  shine  out  with  pe- 
culiar glory,  whatever  our  practice  may  have 
become.  With  all  its  defects,  and  with  all  our  sins 
of  omission  and  of  commission,  there  is  something 
here  which  does  not  appear  in  subsequent  theories 
or  in  those  organizations  which  bid  fair  to  dominate 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  193 

our  future:  realization  of  individuality  as  the  point 
of  existence ;  opportunity  for  man  to  be  a  free  agent 
in  his  dealings  with  his  neighbor.  Certainly  the 
labor  unions  show  no  conception  of  the  meaning  of 
this  principle;  certainly  socialism  bears  no  mark 
of  it.  These  abstract  schemes  which  give  undue 
power  to  the  state  have  nothing  to  offer  in  extent 
of  freedom  comparable  with  that  of  our  government. 
They  menace  the  vitality  and  the  integrity  of  men's 
souls. 

I  am  thus  a  more  and  more  convinced  American 
citizen,  though  I  admit  that  our  great  experiment 
has  been  only  partly  successful,  and  I  am  often  ap- 
palled by  the  extent  to  which  we  have  failed.  This 
my  America  is  guilty  of  many  shortcomings  and 
lapses,  yes,  of  innumerable  disgraces,  but  her  con- 
stitution, her  possibilities  of  government  to  secure 
the  welfare  and  the  full  development  of  the  human 
race  are  far  better  than  any  of  the  theories  and 
schemes,  socialisms,  anarchisms,  collectivisms,  that 
I  have  investigated.  There  is  something  here  which 
I  find  in  no  other,  at  least,  to  so  great  an  extent: 
not  only  opportunity  for  individual  development, 
but  challenge  to  individual  disinterestedness. 

Thus,  while  men  are  thinking  in  terms  of  collec- 
tivism, I,  fully  realizing  that  I  may  be  an 
anachronism,  think  more  and  more  in  terms  of  in- 
dividuality, raised  to  the  highest  power,  its  highest 
power  of  all  being  a  profound  sense  of  responsibility 
for  other  lives.  Our  forefathers  were  not  wrong  in 
conceiving  the  secret  of  government  to  be  life's 
secret,  the  chance  to  develop  individuality;  did  they 
fully  understand  that  the  secret  of  righteous  gov- 
ernment is  the  power  to  understand  another's  in- 


194  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

dividual! ty  and  help  bring  it  to  fulfilment?  I  feel 
that  they  did  not,  and  that  they  did  not  make  suffi- 
cient provision  for  lifting  the  weights  that  crush  hu- 
manity; it  is  for  us  to  supplement  and  complete 
their  plan.  On  the  other  hand  our  Constitution, 
which  represents  the  finest  thought  of  the  period 
which  produced  it,  is  a  magnificent  declaration  of 
faith  in  human  nature,  an  assertion  of  belief  that 
it  will  live  up  to  its  best;  it  is  for  us  to  justify  this 
faith. 

This  side  of  the  great  creed  needs  prophets  and 
priests  to  interpret  it.  As  I  study  democracy  in  its 
pure  theory,  as  here  expressed,  and  then  in  its  ac- 
tual working  in  a  typical  town,  like  Mataquoit,  that 
which  strikes  me  most  forcibly  is  the  wealth  of  un- 
used opportunity  for  high  and  disinterested  citizen- 
ship. Observation  here,  recollection  of  the  earlier 
days  of  my  life,  bring  the  same  result:  regret  that 
character  has  not  risen  to  the  tremendous  challenge, 
regret  for  privileges  not  utilized  in  this  chance  of 
all  the  ages  to  secure  freedom  and  right  develop- 
ment for  all  men,  regret  for  the  shirking  of  the 
finest  opportunity,  the  greatest  responsibility  ever 
granted  to  men.  The  very  conception  of  democracy 
is  essentially  a  spiritual  one,  startlingly  akin  to  lov- 
ing your  neighbor  as  yourself.  All  is  lost,  if  the 
response  to  its  opportunity  here  continues  in  future 
to  be,  as  it  has  been  largely  in  the  past,  a  material 
one,  if  the  privilege  it  gives  is  but  privilege  to  make 
individual  fortunes,  to  pad  comfortable  places  for 
one's  self  and  one's  own.  We  want  a  social  creed, 
as  full  of  generosity,  of  sense  of  justice,  as  that  of 
the  socialists,  yet  full  of  challenge  to  the  individual 
conscience,  and  faith  in  that  conscience;  we  want 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  195 

individualism,  but  not  the  old,  selfish  individualism 
—  we  must  be  purged  of  that,  holding  high  our 
chance  to  serve,  realizing  that  the  only  true  freedom 
lies  in  the  escape  of  self  into  beneficent  force.  The 
final  development  of  individuality  lies  in  supreme, 
voluntary  service. 

Doubtless  Alexander  Wallace  is  partly  responsible 
for  my  new  insight,  making  me  realize  what  our 
country  might  be  were  all  men  even  as  he.  I  rather 
like  the  way  in  which  the  answer  to  some  of  my 
questioning  has  come  concretely,  through  person- 
ality, for  ours  is,  supremely,  a  civilization  which 
must  be  built  on  individual  character,  the  country 
over.  Thinking  of  what  we  need,  in  public  citizens 
and  in  private,  I  see  that  this  man  points  the  goal 
toward  which  my  thought  has  been  blindly  striving. 
He  is  of  more  service  to  his  kind  than  a  round  dozen 
of  theorists  who  can  work  out  and  put  down  upon 
paper  those  apparently  logical  systems  of  govern- 
ment which  are  based,  not  upon  human  nature,  but 
upon  some  abstract  conception  of  man  as  he  is  not, 
systems  as  unworkable  and  as  fragile  as  children's 
mechanical  toys.  In  him  I  realize  that  the  true 
ordering  of  a  people's  life  is  a  matter  of  daily  con- 
science of  all  citizens,  not  merely  of  articles  in  a 
constitution. 

January  20. 

Spent  the  morning  over  a  pair  of  shoes  belonging 
to  Enoch  Ames,  the  truckman,  with  yawning  rents 
large  enough  to  daunt  the  stoutest  cobbler's  heart 
since  the  days  of  St.  Crispin.  I  was  on  my  mettle, 
in  a  mood  of  determination  that  no  wear  and  tear 
should  prove  beyond  mending,  and  I  made  good, 


196  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

though  the  original  substance  has  largely  disap- 
peared under  the  repairs.  My  task  was  so  complex 
that  I  should  have  given  my  whole  mind  to  it,  but 
I  did  not;  all  the  time  I  was  thinking,  going  back 
over  the  years.  In  those  old  days  I  never  realized 
that  the  destiny  of  the  world  was  my  job,  every 
man's  job.  Did  it  take  so  vast  an  upheaval,  knowl- 
edge of  such  boundless  suffering,  to  rouse  us?  Truly 
the  shell  of  human  nature  must  be  hard  to  crack  if 
such  tremendous  blows  are  necessary  to  usher  the 
soul  into  life. 

At  noon  I  got  a  letter  from  Jack,  a  bit  fuller  in 
expression  than  most  of  his  letters.  The  military 
training  club  takes  an  increasing  amount  of  time; 
didn't  I  think  that  it  looked  more  and  more  as  if 
there  might  be  need  of  its  service,  with  the  relations 
between  our  country  and  Germany  growing  more 
and  more  strained?  For  this  reason  it  seems  neces- 
sary to  go  into  the  matter  rather  thoroughly;  there 
really  is  no  end  of  things  to  be  done.  The  college 
authorities  are  making  great  concessions  in  the 
matter  of  academic  work  so  that  the  training  may 
go  on. 

"And  the  joke  of  it  is,"  wrote  Jack,  "that  I  am 
just  beginning  to  wake  up  to  the  book  side  of  things, 
now  when  I  am  too  busy  to  read.  I  can't  get  half 
time  enough  for  history;  somehow  it  has  come  to 
life;  and  the  same  way  with  literature.  I'm  a  regu- 
lar bookworm  now,  or  I  would  be  if  I  didn't  have 
so  many  stunts  to  do,  getting  up  my  muscle." 

In  and  through  all  this  I  divined  the  struggle  of 
a  young  soul  wakening  to  its  responsibilities,  wrest- 
ling in  the  throes  of  the  hardest  decision  that  youth 
has  had  to  make  in  all  the  ages.  The  harshness  of 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  197 

the  teaching  by  means  of  which  we  are  roused  to 
new  insights  and  new  sympathies,  as  I  have  often 
thought  in  watching  the  ways  of  sorrow  in  this  life, 
and  now  realize  again  in  watching  the  world  woe, 
would  suggest  that  nature  has  no  Montessori 
method,  no  kindergarten  persuasions  to  offer  her 
pupils,  but  loss,  and  anguish,  and  bitter  sharing  of 
another's  grief.  It  is  in  our  stronger  moments  only 
that  we  dare  adventure  the  heroic  faith  that  the 
great  school  mistress  of  us  all  is  cruel  only  to  be 
kind. 


XXIII 

January  25. 

Some  days,  in  this  world  of  encompassing  snows 
and  sweeping  winds,  I  have,  in  spite  of  my  widening 
acquaintance  with  human  beings,  no  one  to  talk  to 
but  Tim.  The  odds  in  the  matter  of  conversation 
are  not  so  great  as  you  would  think;  Tim  has  a  tail. 

He  came  in  to-day  after  furious  barking,  from 
which  I  had  been  unable  to  recall  him ;  he  had  been 
disputing  some  matter  of  village  management  with 
a  black  and  tan.  He  slunk  under  my  rebuke  into 
a  corner  and  lay  down  with  his  head  on  his  paws, 
his  eyes  fixed  anxiously  upon  my  face. 

"Is  it  true  then,  Tim,"  I  asked  him,  for  I  was  at 
town  meeting  last  night,  "that  in  a  democracy  the 
loudest,  most  insistent  voice  dominates,  and  not 
the  wisest?" 

He  gave  a  single,  penitent  half -bark  of  assent ,  ...e 
black  and  tan  had  gone  away  with  his  tail  between 
his  legs. 

"For  shame,  Tim;  you  are  a  mere  demagogue," 
I  told  him.  "Look  out,  or  you  may  find  yourself  in 
the  Senate  or  the  House,"  for  I  have  my  moments 
of  discouragement,  even  in  this  time  of  increasing 
faith,  and  this  was  a  day  when  the  thought  of  demos 
weighed  upon  me  with  a  sense  of  his  deeds,  instead 
of  inspiring  me  with  a  thought  of  his  opportunities. 

"And  what,  Tim,  do  you  think  of  the  fickleness  of 
youth?"  I  asked  him,  as  the  hours  went  on,  and  no 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  199 

Jack  came,  for  Jack  was  at  home  for  the  week-end, 
and  I  had  as  yet  caught  no  glimpse  of  him.  Tim 
listened,  with  ears  pricked  up.  But  there  must  be 
no  impatience  in  my  mood  toward  Jack,  or  Tim 
will  fail  to  show  his  old  affectionate  cordiality,  may 
even  be  rude.  Often  he  distresses  me,  though  he  is 
civil  to  an  increasing  number  of  people,  by  begin- 
ning to  bark  disrespectfully  —  or  shall  I  say  criti- 
cally? —  at  people  whom  I  have  not  yet  learned  to 
like.  Can  not  one  have  a  dog  without  keeping  one's 
soul  in  a  state  of  improper  exposure?  I  must  mend 
my  state  of  mind  in  regard  to  these  people. 

February  10. 

Rocks,  surf,  and  a  freshening  wind;  this  morning 
one  old  crow  cawed  so  loud  from  a  scrub  pine  near 
my  shop  window  that  he  drove  me  out  to  see  if  I 
could  find  the  world  outside  as  interesting  as  he 
evidently  found  it.  Made  no  new  discoveries,  but 
the  walk  did  me  good,  and  the  tingling  salt  air  made 
the  blood  run  in  my  veins  as  it  has  not  run  since  I 
was  young. 

These  crows  interest  me  endlessly.  A  band  of 
seventeen  live  in  the  woods  back  of  the  town,  and 
on  sunny  days  they  come  in  search  for  food,  flying 
solemnly  down  to  the  shore  in  formation,  following 
a  leader  who  clears  the  air  ahead  and  defines  the 
pathway  for  their  wings. 

Where  are  we  of  Mataquoit,  of  all  the  towns  and 
villages  of  America,  going  to  get  leadership?  How 
are  we  to  be  made  aware  of  our  need  of  it?  On  the 
whole  I  have  faith  enough  in  nature  to  believe  that 
it  is  not  merely  the  crow  with  the  loudest  caw  that 
leads  the  band,  but  the  one  with  the  wisest  head. 


200  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

It  would  seem  well  if  human  folk  should  follow 
nature's  way;  I  had  supposed,  in  looking  back  over 
the  pages  of  history,  that  a  craving  for  guidance  was 
a  fundamental  human  instinct,  and  a  wise  one,  but 
our  modern  tendency  is  to  eliminate  that  which  even 
crows  have,  leadership;  to  be  jealous  of  any  superi- 
ority whatever;  to  call  one  who  resolutely  follows 
his  ideal  wise  in  his  own  conceit.  I  can  never  get 
over  my  surprise  at  the  passion  for  mediocrity  which 
dominates  these  days;  the  very  schoolboy  is 
ashamed  of  finer  mental  endowment  in  himself  and 
intolerant  of  it  in  others;  the  college  student  who 
shows  signs  of  interest  in  intellectual  matters  above 
that  of  the  mass  is  branded  as  by  the  mark  of  Cain. 
When  the  communists  really  come  to  power,  wild 
ducks  and  geese,  I  presume,  will  have  to  fly  in  level 
line,  no  leadership  permitted ;  wolf  packs  must  give 
up  their  leader,  and  rule  by  a  committee  of  the 
whole.  And  human  beings?  —  but  the  "imagina- 
tion boggles  at"  that  which  human  beings  will  do. 
I  fear  the  menace  of  the  days  when  the  great  insight, 
that  which  might  lead  the  race,  will  be  destroyed,  be- 
cause it  is  beyond  the  common  vision,  above  the 
common  will. 

February  12. 

Through  all  my  intercourse  with  my  neighbors  in 
Mataquoit  runs  a  persistent  questioning:  how  to 
rouse  in  them  deeper  desires,  nobler  dissatisfaction, 
how  to  break  through  this  crust  of  complacency. 
Men  should  hunger  and  thirst,  feeling  forever  some 
sense  of  lack,  not  rest  content  with  their  full  larders 
and  smug  pews  and  houses  empty  of  books;  with 
their  county  fairs  and  moving  pictures  representing 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  201 

the  highest  attainable  ideal  of  human  achievement 
and  human  diversion.  We  need  prophets  of  the 
finer  discontent. 

Yet,  even  as  I  write,  I  am  conscious  that  this 
air  of  exhortation  is  not  for  me  to  wear,  —  for 
me,  who  have  chosen  the  barrel  head  rather  than 
the  platform  as  an  approach  to  my  fellow  men.  I 
must  drop  this  "they"  and  "them";  did  I  not  long 
ago  choose  to  say  "we?" 

One  great  trouble  with  us  in  Mataquoit  is  that  we 
are  characterized  by  a  species  of  vulgar  mysticism, 
a  rough,  conceited  certainty  of  direct  inspiration, 
source  unknown,  an  assurance  on  the  part  of  the  in- 
dividual of  being  able  to  arrive  at  truth  by  what  is 
called  "gumption."  This  faculty  is  purely  indig- 
enous, as  strictly  American  as  is  the  Indian  pipe 
or  the  turkey  buzzard;  no  other  country,  no  other 
race  could  attain  it.  It  acts  without  knowledge 
or  desire  for  knowledge;  it  is  colossal  guesswork, 
camouflaging  abysmal  ignorance;  it  is  something 
against  Which  reason  shall  not  prevail.  From  street 
corner,  shop,  platform  I  Hear  the  voice  of  the  too- 
easily  omniscient  and  watch  with  misgiving  on  the 
part  of  the  listeners  the  content  with  mere  assertion. 
Our  country  over,  from  the  remotest  fireside  to  the 
Senate  and  the  House,  we  suffer  from  this  cocksure- 
ness,  individual  and  communal.  It  is,  as  a  dry 
rot,  checking  growth,  keeping  us  from  asking  things 
high  enough  or  hard  enough:  who  will  seek  knowl- 
edge when  he  knows  all?  Yet  too  easy  self-satis- 
faction spells  failure  for  individuals,  communities, 
nations. 

Our  great  danger  is  that  this  may  prove  an  in- 
vincible foe  to  the  more  vital  citizenship  which  we 


202  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

are  trying  to  establish,  checking  all  higher  effort  of 
thought  and  of  deed ;  we  must  not  drop  back  to  the 
average  mood,  the  average  aspiration  of  the  average 
man.  This  great  heritage  of  freedom  that  was  be- 
queathed us  was  not  given  us  that  we  might  slip 
comfortably  down  to  low  levels,  but  that  we  might 
have  opportunity  to  rise  higher.  How  can  democ- 
racy be  kept  from  being  a  landslide  of  common 
desires  and  appetites,  if  the  masses  have  their  way; 
worse  still  —  for  at  moments  of  this  constantly  men- 
acing labor-struggle  hidden  apprehension  will  out  — 
the  satisfaction  of  old  revenges,  as  the  selfishness 
of  the  old  reigning  class  gives  way  to  the  selfishness 
of  the  new,  sweeping  over  everything  and  submerg- 
ing the  little  already  won  for  civilization?  Will 
it  not  mean  lack  of  proper  valuation  of  the  things 
of  the  spirit,  emphasis  on  material  satisfaction  and 
indulgence  long  denied?  One  thing  is  overwhelm- 
ingly clear,  clearer  even  than  when  I  set  out  on 
this  quest:  we  must  have  leadership,  for  democracy 
without  high  leadership  is  chaos.  Plato  was  quite 
right  in  making  his  ideal  republic  an  aristocracy 
of  mind,  for  demos  will  never  achieve  his  full  rights 
or  be  able  to  live  up  to  his  finer  privileges  by  his  own 
unaided  mental  exertions.  However  desirable  were 
that  liberty  and  equality  of  our  forefathers'  creed, 
there  can  be  no  intellectual  and  spiritual  equality 
among  men,  no  equality  of  personality,  —  God  for- 
bid that  there  should  be!  Where  were  our  aspira- 
tions, were  there  none  better  than  ourselves?  When 
every  man  is  as  good  as  his  neighbor,  none  is  very 
good. 

All  greatest  things  for  the  race  have  come  through 
individual  insight,  through  the  divining  power  of 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  203 

individual  genius,  through  individual  renunciation 
or  individual  achievement,  pointing  the  way  for  the 
masses.  The  history  of  the  world  for  me,  all  that  can 
be  counted  to  the  good,  is  the  history  of  the  great 
leaders,  Plato,  Christ,  St.  Francis,  Savonarola,  Maz- 
zini,  Lincoln,  and  a  choice  other  few,  who  have 
founded  the  great  faiths,  enunciated  the  eternal 
hopes,  made  the  great  decisions.  No  "committee 
of  the  whole,"  even  if  it  be  the  whole  human  race, 
will  ever  work  out  the  great  imaginative  conceptions 
that  guide  the  multitudes,  or  take  the  place  of  those 
personalities  which  are  set  as  beacons  above  life  and 
time. 

Great  intellectual,  aesthetic,  and  spiritual  stand- 
ards must  be  held  high  before  us;  every  man  must 
do  his  utmost  as  an  individual  to  attain  to  his  full 
mental  and  spiritual  stature;  yet  every  man  must 
do  his  utmost  to  understand,  sympathize,  walk  with 
all  men.  These  two  great,  even  staggering  aims 
represent  the  central  paradox  of  democratic  faith. 
How  can  we  learn  to  reverence  individual  man  and 
still  recognize  his  limitations,  his  need  of  guidance? 
How  can  we  reverence  man  sufficiently  without 
losing  the  deeper  reverence  for  the  beauty  of  the 
Lord  our  God? 

February  17. 

Of  these  winter  days,  when  the  sea  lashes  Mata- 
quoit,  and  long  lines  of  breakers  turn  to  white  foam ; 
when  the  war  news  lashes  mind  and  soul,  with  its 
record  of  fighting  back  and  forth  upon  the  Somme 
front,  and  the  apparent  beginning  of  a  German 
retirement,  I  am  making  no  record.  Sometimes,  to 
tell  the  truth,  my  fingers  are  too  cold  to  write.  My 


204  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

days  are  so  much  alike  that  they  pass  imperceptibly : 
white  days  of  snow,  brown  days  of  thaw,  and  gray 
days  or  blue  of  ocean. 

For  this  deeper  striving  of  the  soul  about  the  war, 
words  are  increasingly  inadequate;  nor  can  they  in 
any  way  express  this  desire  which  day  by  day  grows 
more  intense  to  know  more  than  I  have  yet  known 
of  life  and  its  meaning,  of  democracy  —  that  fairest 
chance  for  justice  among  men,  and  its  possibilities  — 
to  hope  more  than  I  have  yet  dared  hope,  before  the 
last  days  go,  before  my  mental  powers  wane,  and  I 
understand  nothing.  Each  day  I  realize  more  fully 
the  difficulty  of  my  task;  each  day  I  reaffirm  my  re- 
solve to  sell  dearly  in  increasing  effort  my  remaining 
years,  lest  I  find  myself  left  behind  in  this  greater 
world  which  is  in  the  making.  With  every  gold- 
colored  dawn  or  gray  I  set  out  afresh,  under  the 
sting  of  winter,  to  make  good  before  it  is  too  late, 
to  help  discover  the  real  America,  serve  her,  reveal 
her. 

I  have  Tim,  who  now,  to  my  great  pleasure,  gives 
friendly  greeting  to  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Mataquoit,  making  me  hopeful  that  I  am  out- 
growing my  old  state  of  constant  selection,  pref- 
erence, shutting  out  from  my  sympathy  the  less 
fine ;  I  have  my  shop,  my  friends,  my  shelf  of  books, 
and  many  a  neighbor,  chief  among  whom,  if  it  is 
legitimate  to  record  a  mere  human  preference,  is 
Alexander  Wallace.  I  have,  sometimes  in  the  body 
and  constantly  in  thought,  Jack,  —  and  the  possibil- 
ities of  an  awakened  Jack,  of  all  the  fine  young 
manhood  of  the  country.  A  number  of  the  lads 
about  town  drop  in  to  talk  with  me  now,  some  with 
a  touch  of  respectful  shyness,  some  with  kindly  con- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  205 

descension.  The  two  armchairs  which  I  purchased 
in  October  at  Sands'  Emporium,  turning  out  much 
junk  and  the  section  of  a  tree  to  make  room  for 
them,  are  already  hollowed  from  constant  use;  I 
have  to  lure  my  fellow  citizens  by  methods  that 
really  appeal  to  them.  So  far  has  my  intimacy  gone 
that  I  am  now  and  then  invited  to  sup  with  them  at 
their  own  firesides;  it  was  with  Abel  Marks,  the 
postman,  and  his  family  that  I  partook  of  fried 
oysters  last  night. 

My  lifelong  literary  study  of  man  and  his  motives, 
my  psychological  investigations,  have  not  given  me 
as  much  insight  into  my  fellow  creatures  as  has  this 
attempt  to  know  a  few  individuals  not  of  my  own 
kind.  I  comprehend  much  regarding  the  motives 
and  the  actions  of  these  people  because  I  live  their 
life;  there  is  no  moment  of  contact  with  my  neigh- 
bors that  fails  to  bring  me  some  wisdom.  The  com- 
plexity of  men's  make-up  astonishes  me  each  day 
anew  and  brings  afresh  the  knowledge  that  it  is 
upon  understanding  of  this  complexity  that  govern- 
ments must  rest;  statesmen  should  be  required  to 
pass  an  examination  in  human  nature  rather  than 
in  abstract  theories  of  law  and  rule. 

Through  all  these  moments  of  human  contact, 
pleasurable  or  otherwise,  the  old  problems  occupy 
me:  how  to  secure  right  leadership ;  how  to  get  every 
man  to  do  his  share ;  how  to  win  again  for  American 
citizens  our  lost  unity  of  aim.  As  for  the  first,  the 
conviction  within  me  deepens  that  we  who  have 
inherited  high  tradition,  who  have  been  intellec- 
tually and  morally  trained  for  leadership,  but  have 
made  no  effort  to  take  up  our  duties,  have  been  as 
guilty  of  treason  as  a  band  of  officers  would  be  in 


206  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

this  war,  who,  while  the  battle  was  on,  were  quietly 
disporting  themselves  in  the  Louvre  in  aesthetic 
enjoyment.  My  three  points  blend  and  merge ;  my 
present  intensity  of  thought  and  of  feeling,  which 
makes  me  realize  how  little  I  have  cared  or  under- 
stood, how  selfishly  I  have  taken  freedom  for 
granted,  makes  clear  to  me  also  that  the  one  thing 
needful  for  the  salvation  of  our  country  is  a  sense 
on  the  part  of  every  human  being  of  his  individual 
responsibility,  a  greater  sense  of  his  individual 
opportunity.  What  moment,  what  crisis  will  come, 
great  enough  to  make  every  citizen  bend  every  fiber 
of  energy  that  is  in  him  to  the  achievement  of  a 
common  aim? 

February  28. 

Icicles  hang  at  my  eaves  in  the  cold  February  sun- 
light; it  is  a  marvel  that  my  roof  can  support  so 
many  and  such  huge  ones.  Their  drip,  drip  at  noon 
when  the  sunlight  is  warmest  is  as  yet  the  only 
prophecy  of  spring. 

Still  I  have  little  mind  for  writing,  though  my 
ledger  lies  upon  my  bench  at  all  tunes  and  has  grown 
to  be  something  of  a  companion.  To  tell  truth,  one 
reason  for  my  infrequent  entries  during  the  winter 
is  the  fact,  that,  in  my  non-cobbling  hours,  I  have 
been  so  busy  with  town  affairs  that  there  has  been 
little  leisure.  At  town  meeting  I  have  been  put 
upon  two  committees,  one  to  organize  the  library  on 
a  better  intellectual  basis ;  one  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  a  gymnasium  for  the  youth  of  Mataquoit 
and  to  raise  funds  for  it,  if  the  measure  passes. 

My  old  Socratic  dialogue  between  my  past  and 
my  present  self  goes  on  now  and  then  in  the  mo- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  207 

ments  when  no  neighbor  is  occupying  the  chair  at 
my  fireside,  but  both  this  and  our  constructive 
plans  for  the  bettering  of  government  in  Mata- 
quoit  and  elsewhere  are  interrupted  by  a  sense  of 
present  crisis.  There  is  growing  tension  in  the 
political  situation,  since  Germany's  announcement 
on  February  first  of  unrestricted  submarine  war- 
fare ;  we  are  swept  by  the  awful  current  of  the  time 
nearer  and  nearer  the  war.  Nor  are  we  mere  drift- 
wood, floating  passively  on  the  current;  the  will  of 
the  many  throughout  the  country  who  have  known 
from  the  first  that  we  were  recreant  hi  not  helping 
is  beginning  to  make  itself  felt. 

March  — . 

I  do  not  know  the  day;  I  must  get  a  calendar. 
Tim,  in  a  moment  of  belated  puppyhood,  ate  my 
old  one. 

There  is  a  freshness,  a  sting  in  the  air,  a  clarity 
and  sharpness;  the  sea  is  of  a  deep,  intense,  and 
royal  blue.  There  is  no  other  color  and  sparkle  akin 
to  that  of  the  sea  in  March;  the  glory  of  great 
waters  rolls  almost  to  our  thresholds.  It  is  doubt- 
less pure  imagination,  but  nature  almost  seems  to 
be  sharing  the  tension  of  the  moment,  the  whole 
world,  the  frozen  earth,  waiting  breathlessly  while 
America  debates  the  great  question  of  finding  her 
place  in  the  world's  struggle  and  sharing  it.  Since 
the  dismissal  of  Count  von  Bernstoff,  Belgium, 
France,  England  are  turning  toward  us  eyes  in 
which  there  is  something  almost  like  hope.  Our 
America  is  pausing,  in  surprise  so  great  that  a  curi- 
ous quiet  reigns,  on  the  verge  of  a  great  decision, 
so  vast  that  it  holds  within  it  the  future  destinies 


208  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  a  great  part  of  mankind.  God  grant  that  we, 
challenged  by  a  duty  as  glorious  as  it  is  hard,  do 
not  make  the  great  refusal.  In  the  awful  light 
of  a  burning  world  our  path  lies  clear,  out  of  our  self- 
centered,  material  greatness,  up  Calvary,  where 
all  truth  treads. 
I  have  a  deep  desire  to  see  Jack. 


xxiy 

April  6. 

The  sense  of  stigma  is  removed ;  we  can  now  hold 
up  our  heads.  Congress  has  declared  that  a  state 
of  war  exists  between  us  and  Germany.  An  intoler- 
able burden  of  shame  rolls  off  our  backs  as  we  take 
up  our  legitimate  load.  For  unnumbered  thou- 
sands in  the  country,  as  for  me,  who  have  hardly 
admitted  to  myself  how  deep  has  been  my  convic- 
tion that  we  should  go  to  the  rescue,  there  is  pro- 
found relief,  after  long  anxiety.  There  is  tragic  irony 
in  the  situation :  we,  the  most  pacific  of  nations ;  we, 
whose  ancestors  sought  a  refuge  apart  from  the  con- 
tests and  the  fighting  of  Europe,  are  yet  thankful 
with  deep  thankfulness  that  the  great  decision  is 
made.  We  no  longer  stand  apart,  saying  that  we  are 
not  concerned  with  this  struggle,  wherein  so  great  a 
part  of  human  kind  is  at  death  grips  with  hell. 

There  is,  so  far  as  reports  reach  us,  no  jingoism 
throughout  the  country  at  this  supreme  moment; 
no  glorification  of  war  as  war;  there  is  little  edi- 
torial waving  of  plumes  and  clanking  of  swords. 
From  sea  to  sea  a  sober  sadness  reigns,  an  almost 
universal  feeling  that  the  moment  has  come  for  us 
to  take  up  our  responsibilities,  to  make  the  great 
sacrifice. 

Looking  back  at  the  long  way  which  we  have 
traveled  before  reaching  this  point,  I  feel,  I,  whose 
soul  has  for  many  months  been  burning  with  a  sense 


210  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  shame  because  we  were  not  helping,  that  our 
critics,  for  whom  our  progress  has  been  over-slow, 
must  not  treat  us  too  harshly.  The  baser  side  of 
our  hesitation  I  have  recorded;  there  is  a  nobler 
aspect  which  must  be  recognized.  In  our  very  in- 
ability to  believe  it  possible  that  Christian  human 
beings  could  go  back  to  the  sorry  barbarian  ways  of 
slaughter;  in  our  horrified  incredulity  of  August, 
1914,  was  perhaps  the  best  measure  of  our  growth, 
of  what  democracy  has  wrought  hi  the  thought  of 
man  for  man.  Small  wonder  that  it  was  hard  for  us 
to  realize  that,  for  the  sake  of  the  whole,  it  was  our 
duty  to  go  back  too.  Those  who  have  tried  to  think 
that  we  stood  above  such  conflict,  by  reason  of  some 
special  privilege  of  circumstance,  —  geographic,  be- 
cause the  seas  are  wide;  historic,  because  of  the 
peace  tradition  of  a  free  country,  —  have  slowly 
gained  clearer  vision  as  to  the  significance  of  the 
present  hour.  Only  as  it  lifted  itself  out  of  the 
struggle  between  old  enemies,  and  declared  itself 
as  aggression,  threatening  the  liberties  of  the  world, 
did  the  conflict  become  ours.  And  it  became  ours 
in  a  finer  sense  than  has  ever  been  the  case  in  the 
drawing  of  a  great  nation  into  war;  it  has 
hardly  touched  our  rights;  we  fight  for  a  prin- 
ciple :  "to  make  honor  respected  and  right  triumph- 
ant." How  many  are  the  mists  that  had  to  break 
away  before  the  long  white  road  lay  clear  before  us, 
leading  to  the  very  heart  of  that  tragic  struggle,  to 
those  vast  fields  where  the  souls  of  men  are  fighting ! 

April  10. 

A  letter  from  Jack;  he  has  enlisted.    Went  for  a 
walk  by  the  sea. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  211 

April  12. 

My  first  feeling  upon  learning  of  Jack's  decision 
was  one  of  exultation,  mingled  with  a  bitter  sense 
of  loss:  Jack  had  "made  good." 

Soon  after  came  a  thrill  of  triumph,  as  I  thought 
of  the  parents,  especially  the  mother,  who  had  tried 
to  keep  small  what  was  meant  to  be  great. 

"You  have  kept  everything  hard  from  him/'  I 
remarked,  in  imaginary  conversation,  as  I  tapped 
at  the  shoe  I  was  mending;  "you  have  done  your 
best  to  make  him  a  weakling;  and  you  have  failed! 
He  has  too  much  good,  old-fashioned  stuff  in  him 
to  be  ruined  by  any  modern  fad  or  fancy  whatever, 
even  in  education." 

But  when  I  really  saw  Mrs.  Sands,  my  congratu- 
latory mood  because  of  this  fulfilment  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  excellence  was,  for  the  moment,  wholly  lost 
in  human  sympathy.  She  came  to  my  shop  this 
very  afternoon;  her  nose  was  red;  a  strand  of  hair 
had  escaped  from  the  net  and  was  dangling  over 
her  cheek,  wet  with  tears.  Her  sailor  hat  was 
tipped  rakishly  over  one  ear,  but  never  had  she 
looked  so  well  in  my  eyes.  It  was  her  one  natural 
moment,  though  she  did  come  tottering  in  on  those 
ridiculous  high-heeled  shoes. 

"My  boy!"  she  said,  half  sobbing.  "He  has  for- 
gotten all  the  principles  I  ever  taught  him." 

"Thank  God  for  that,  Madam,"  I  said,  paring 
off  the  sole  I  was  adjusting.  "You  ought  to  be  the 
proudest  woman  on  God's  earth ;  you  have  brought 
forth  something  finer  than  yourself." 

Alas,  these  people  with  whom  you  keep  up  a 
constant  sub-dialogue  in  thought  of  the  things  you 
cannot  say!  Of  course  I  made  none  of  these  re- 


212  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

marks  to  Mrs.  Sands,  but  only  did  my  poor  human 
best  to  console  her  and  make  her  understand. 


April  19. 

The  air  is  chill,  yet  there  is  spring  in  the  willows, 
and  spring  on  the  headlands  in  the  first  delicate 
ripple  of  the  grass;  spring  in  the  notes  of  the  early 
birds,  —  two  or  three  robbins,  a  grosbeak,  a  few 
song  sparrows  by  the  shore ;  spring  in  the  deepening 
green  of  the  long  marsh  grasses,  in  the  swish  and 
murmur  of  the  tidal  river. 

Already  I  feel  a  difference  in  this  our  America, 
rising  to  the  call  of  the  war;  she  presents  a  strange 
face  and  unfamiliar,  beginning  to  beat  her  plough- 
shares into  swords  for  righteousness'  sake.  There 
is  a  new  life  and  stir  in  Mataquoit  and  in  the  neigh- 
boring towns  along  the  shore ;  it  would  almost  seem 
as  if  there  were  a  new  tide  in  the  sea,  or  as  if  it 
were  constantly  incoming  tide,  as,  man  by  man, 
woman  by  woman,  the  nation  rouses  itself  out  of 
comfort,  out  of  content,  out  of  strife  for  wealth 
and  power,  to  effort  that  may  match  this  supreme 
moment. 

With  all  the  rustle  and  movement  of  unaccus- 
tomed activities,  an  awe,  a  silence  lie  over  the 
land.  In  the  eyes  of  people  unanswered  question; 
men  talk  busily  about  trivial  things  but  look  away. 
We  are  breathless  all,  as  if  standing  on  the  edge  of 
life  and  time. 

April  25. 

Jack  was  with  me  half  an  hour  yesterday,  an 
hour  to-day;  he  goes  to  camp  to-morrow.  As  he 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  213 

sat  in  one  of  my  arm-chairs,  talking  nonchalantly 
about  his  preparations  —  for  he  is  ransacking  Sands' 
Emporium  to  see  what  it  can  do  in  the  way  of 
supplying  his  outfit  —  I  smiled,  remembering  my 
old  fear  that  he,  so  easy-going,  so  much  a  hail- 
fellow-well-met  with  all  men,  might  fritter  away 
his  energies,  and  be,  at  forty,  still  a  boy,  unless 
something  came  to  sting  him  to  action.  Now  the 
need  of  a  great  hour  has  roused  him  and  is  creating 
him  anew,  drawing  out  the  resources  of  a  richly 
human  nature  and  bending  them  to  one  purpose, 
unifying  the  physical,  mental,  spiritual  powers 
within  him. 

As  I  looked  at  him,  thinking  of  the  race  to  which 
he  belongs,  he  seemed  to  me  fairly  representative 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  temperament  at  its  best,  with 
its  conservatism,  its  steadiness,  its  instinctive  need 
of  securing  fair  play.  For  him,  and  for  unnumbered 
others  of  his  kind,  war  has  revealed  unsuspected 
depths  of  nature.  As  he  goes  whistling  about  his 
preparations,  I  can  see  that  it  is  focussing  all  the 
strength,  all  the  aspiration  within  him,  making  of 
petted  son,  half-successful  student,  mere  athlete, 
a  knight  of  a  new  and  holy  order  of  American 
democracy,  arming  himself  to  fight  treachery, 
cruelty,  lust. 

There  have  been  stormy  moments  in  the  last  few 
days  when  contests  have  taken  place  between  him 
and  his  parents  as  to  his  action  in  enlisting ;  I  have 
seen  in  his  eyes,  perplexed  at  times,  the  old  laissez- 
faire  look  struggling  with  his  own  resolution.  I 
stand  by  him,  of  course,  now  that  his  decision  is 
made,  meeting  his  mother's  objections,  his  father's 
objections,  and,  harder  still,  my  own  objections. 


214  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

Of  the  last,  nobody,  not  even  Jack  himself,  is 
aware;  nobody  save  Tim  and  me. 

May  1. 

If  the  way  of  the  evil-doer  is  hard,  how  much 
harder  is  the  way  of  the  would-be  well-doer!  Now 
that  the  war  has  come  to  us,  the  suspicion  of  some 
of  my  neighbors  that  I  am  a  German  spy  seems 
to  have  become  a  certainty.  What  have  they  to 
spy  upon,  I  wonder?  I  came  home  to-day  to  find 
Michael  Dunn,  the  local  sleuth,  searching  my  shop ; 
he  had  my  battered  copy  of  the  Republic  in  his 
hands,  and,  judging  by  his  expression  as  he  gazed 
at  the  Greek  letters,  he  found  the  evidence  against 
me  wholly  incriminating.  Doubtless  he  thought  it 
a  code  book;  perhaps  it  is. 

He  grinned  rather  foolishly  when  he  saw  me  and 
decided  that  honesty  was  best;  some  folks,  he  said, 
thought  I  had  come  to  see  what  I  could  find  out. 

"So  I  did,  so  I  did,"  I  assured  him,  "but  with 
wholly  friendly  purposes.  And  if  we  are  going  to 
have  any  country  at  all,  Michael  Dunn,  the  more 
we  can  find  out  about  one  another,  and  the  more 
deeply  we  can  understand  one  another,  the  better." 

To  Michael  Dunn  this  was  more  Greek  than  Plato, 
but  we  sat  on  my  bench  for  an  hour  or  more  and  had 
a  friendly  talk.  Try  as  I  would,  however,  I  could  not 
make  my  idea  of  disinterested  citizenship  wholly 
clear  to  my  Irish  guest. 

This  megalomania  of  the  small  town  shows  itself 
in  constantly  fresh  aspects;  I  might  have  known 
that,  if  we  entered  the  conflict,  Mataquoit  would 
conceive  itself  as  the  strategic  center  of  the  world 
war!  I  daresay  that  the  owners  of  eyes  that  look 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  215 

out  at  me  from  behind  curtains  or  through  shop 
windows  as  I  start  for  a  walk  with  Tim  think  I  spend 
my  spare  hours  putting  in  concrete  platforms  on 
adjacent  hills  for  the  shelling  of  Mataquoit  by  the 
Germans. 

May  8. 

There  is  little  tune  to  write,  with  the  war  work 
that  I  have  undertaken  added  to  my  old  tasks; 
moreover  it  would  take  a  greater  than  I  to  make 
apparent  the  greatness  of  these  days:  the  surging 
emotion  of  the  time  and  the  quick,  hurt  thinking 
that  accompanies  the  emotion  as  people  set  them- 
selves to  know  the  facts,  now  that  the  war  has  come 
home  to  us.  They  who  have  not  known  or  cared  to 
know  are  at  last  rousing  themselves  to  learn,  and 
everywhere,  as  here  in  Mataquoit,  there  are  awaken- 
ing eyes.  There  is  horror  in  them,  yet  through  the 
horror  shines  a  longing  to  find  something  to  do  to 
help  save  mankind. 

I  was  unprepared,  after  my  slow,  often  discour- 
aged study  of  the  citizen  as  existed  in  Mataquoit, 
for  the  splendor  and  the  energy  of  the  country's 
response  to  the  challenge.  The  changed  feeling  here, 
and,  I  doubt  not,  throughout  the  country,  is  a  curi- 
ous thing.  Already  the  war  has  become  a  something 
of  personal  concern;  my  neighbors,  even  those  who 
have  been  deaf  and  blind  to  European  tragedy,  now 
realize  that  this  is  our  war.  The  word  America 
must  have  magic  in  it  if  our  entry  into  the  struggle 
makes  such  a  difference  in  understanding  the  situ- 
ation. I  had  no  idea  that  national  sentiment  was 
so  strong  among  us;  while  I  rejoice  in  its  strength, 
I  mourn  its  narrowness,  for  it  is  in  reality  no  more 


216  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

our  war  than  it  was  before  April  6.  We  were  lag- 
gard in  facing  our  duty ;  I  would  that  we  had  sprung 
sooner  to  our  task. 

But  we  are  roused,  and  the  spirit  of  national  unity 
is  kindling  to  an  extent  no  one  would  have  dreamed 
possible.  As  the  silent  patrol  boats  begin  to  go  up 
and  down  our  coasts,  and  men  in  khaki  appear  here 
and  there  among  civilians,  war  activities  multiply; 
there  is  swift  enlisting  in  the  ranks  of  all  who  can 
help;  nurses,  Red  Cross  workers,  and  tillers  of  the 
soil  are  toiling  to  one  purpose;  the  faces  of  the 
"knitters  and  spinsters  in  the  sun"  at  the  south 
windows  in  Mataquoit  take  on  a  new  expression. 
As  I  think  more  deeply  into  the  matter,  I  cannot 
count  the  emotion  at  the  basis  of  all  this  a  mistaken 
one,  nor  can  I  look  upon  this  pride  in  our  especial 
flag  as  a  narrow  limitation.  We  are  all  beginning  to 
realize  that  our  flag  stands  for  something  greater 
than  the  United  States.  Everywhere,  if  what  I  read 
be  true,  is  a  slow  climbing  upward  to  self-forgetful- 
ness,  as  incredulity  leads  to  tardy  understanding, 
then  to  passionate  espousal  of  a  cause.  Here  is 
genuine  crusading  spirit;  here  is  a  feeling  that, 
greater  than  any  military  glory,  is  the  chance  to 
serve,  not  only  America,  but  the  world. 

All  the  visions  of  past  days  of  peace  go  into  this 
desire  to  vindicate  the  honor  of  the  human  race,  to 
make  peace  possible  for  all  men.  A  greater  America, 
a  more  disinterested  America  arises,  no  longer  stand- 
ing apart  from  the  hard  destiny  of  the  world. 


XXV 

May  10. 

It  has  been  a  proud  day  in  my  life.  In  the  liberty 
parade  of  Mataquoit,  I,  Wentworth  Masters,  idle 
son  and  grandson  of  the  idle  rich,  was  allowed  to 
march  as  one  of  the  company  representing  Ameri- 
can industry.  Two  boot  lasts  were  slung  over  my 
shoulders,  and  I  had  a  necklace  of  awls,  needles,  and 
other  small  instruments.  Beside  me  marched  a 
young  farmer,  carrying  a  pitchfork;  ahead,  a  mason, 
with  trowel  and  hawk.  Women,  with  garden  tools 
and  kitchen  utensils  marched  with  us;  old  men  and 
children  kept  pace,  carrying  the  colors;  young  men, 
with  a  look  on  their  faces  that  I  had  never  before 
seen  there,  walked  abreast.  It  was  a  most  successful 
parade,  having  but  one  drawback,  —  that,  as  all 
who  could  walk,  marched,  there  were  few  to  watch 
and  cheer,  save  the  aged  rheumatic  and  infants  under 
three. 

These  were  rough-shod,  not  sandalled  feet,  and 
the  garb  in  many  cases  was  uncouth,  yet  something 
in  the  movement  brought  to  my  mind  the  joyousness 
and  the  restraint  of  a  Greek  procession.  Here  was  a 
like  simplicity,  though  the  lines  of  beauty  were  not 
always  there;  here  was  that  oneness  of  action,  of 
many  feet  tramping  onward  to  a  common  music; 
and  I  felt  that  they  were  moving  onward,  not  with- 
out a  goal. 


218  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

May  13. 

If  I  try  to  compare  our  national  state  of  mind 
since  April  6  with  our  earlier  stages  of  thought  and 
of  feeling,  shall  I  succeed? 

Since  August,  1914,  and  our  excited  interest,  min- 
gled with  horror  of  war,  our  impatience  that  our 
smug  and  prosperous  peacefulness  should  be  thus 
interrupted,  our  indignation  at  being  made  to  think 
of  these  things,  since  August,  1914,  we  have  been  at 
school,  learning  the  essentials  of  human  brother- 
hood. It  is  evident,  and  has  long  been  evident,  that 
we  have  for  many  months  been  outgrowing  our 
early  sense  of  immunity.  From  the  height  that  we 
have  gained  we  can  perhaps  look  back  and  see  the 
path  by  which  we  have  come.  What  are  the  steps 
by  which  America  has  risen  from  her  first  shocked 
surprise  and  indignation  to  the  point  where  she  is 
willing  to  send  the  very  choicest  of  her  possessions, 
her  youth,  into  this  hell,  for  finer  service?  The 
country  from  end  to  end  agrees,  and  the  whole  world 
agrees  with  us,  that  we  have  no  thought  of  outer 
gain.  "Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and 
puissant  nation  rousing  herself  like  a  strong  man 
after  sleep  and  shaking  her  invincible  locks,"  aware 
beyond  her  own  dreaming  of  spiritual  issues,  sacri- 
ficing her  dearest  that  the  faith  wherein  she  was 
founded  shall  not  die  upon  the  earth. 

The  puzzles  and  perplexities  were  many,  the  diffi- 
culties innumerable,  in  working  out  a  clear  sense  of 
the  great  issue.  He  who  could  write  the  whole  story 
of  the  way  in  which  the  American  people  has  been 
educated,  and  has  educated  itself  into  understand- 
ing, would  write  one  of  the  greatest  studies  of  the 
inner  life  ever  made.  He  would  picture  the  country 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  219 

indifferent,  apart,  standing  outside  the  tragedy,  un- 
aware of  its  obvious  duty;  then  the  slow  awakening. 
The  incredulity,  the  unbelief  of  the  earliest  days 
have  made  place  for  the  slowcoming  belief  that  this 
inconceivable  horror,  brought  about  by  a  people 
farther  from  us  in  ethical  ideals  than  the  separating 
seas,  must  come  to  us,  or  we  must  go  forever  shamed. 
The  horror  is  no  longer  wholly  horror ;  we  are  choos- 
ing to  fight  in  the  name  of  the  spirit ;  the  answer  to 
the  call  for  help  has  raised  the  struggle  out  of  the 
plane  of  the  physical;  it  is  now  not  a  question  of 
blood  and  wounds  and  crushed  bones;  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  "Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this." 

Wilson's  successive  messages  have  done  much  to 
educate  the  people  to  a  break  with  this  country 
toward  whom  our  relation  had  grown  to  be  one  al- 
most of  mental  subservience.  So  greatly  had  we 
been  influenced  by  her  in  systems  of  education  that 
it  could  have  been  truly  said  that  no  other  nation 
save  Germany  bore  so  deep  an  impress  of  the  Ger- 
man intellectual  stamp  as  did  America.  The 
measure  of  that  past  influence  upon  our  minds  is  the 
measure  of  the  shock  to  our  moral  natures  in  be- 
holding the  deeds  of  Germany. 

There  were,  of  course,  at  the  outset  many  who 
said  that  there  were  two  sides  to  the  question,  Ger- 
man and  Ally;  most  of  these  have  grown  to  know 
that  there  are  two  sides  to  the  war,  wrong  and  right. 
From  the  moment  Belgium  was  invaded  the  issue 
was  clear  to  clear- thinking  people:  those  who  could 
condone,  excuse,  explain  this  have  ways  of  thinking 
that  are  hard  to  follow.  That  we  made  no  official 
protest  about  violated  Belgium  has  been,  for  the 
best  among  us,  through  the  intervening  months  and 


220  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

years,  a  source  of  deep  regret,  and  of  a  sense  of 
shame.  The  stigma  must  forever  rest  upon  us  that 
America  said  no  word.  From  the  first  our  dispute 
has  been  a  moral  one,  —  I  am  happy  to  state  that 
the  attacks  upon  our  shipping  brought  no  such  sense 
of  outrage  for  national  wrong  as  was  brought  to  our 
souls  by  successive  atrocities.  The  President's  com- 
mand of  neutrality,  while  it  represented  to  many 
at  the  outset  a  wise  political  attitude,  never  for  a 
moment  imposed  inner  neutrality  upon  our  best. 
No  neutrality  of  thought  or  of  feeling  is  possible  or 
desirable  in  great  issues  of  right  and  wrong. 

As  regards  the  political  aspect,  there  was,  for  the 
greater  number  of  American  citizens  who  thought 
at  all,  keen  suspense  and  fear  lest  Paris  fall,  keen 
sympathy  with  France,  less  keen  for  England. 
Some,  while  sympathizing  with  France,  condemned 
England  for  going  in,  a  short-sighted  view,  for,  if 
England  had  let  France  be  beaten,  what  of  the 
future  of  Europe?  There  were  many  of  us  who 
knew  from  the  first  that  we  ought  to  be  at  the  side 
of  England,  never  nobler  than  now,  marching 
wearily  but  resolutely  to  the  fighting  line,  all  un- 
prepared as  she  was,  for  the  defense  of  heroic  France 
and  Belgium  and  for  the  liberties  of  mankind. 
More,  vastly  more,  have  been  convinced  of  this  since 
the  deportations  began,  and  since  the  sinking  of  the 
Lusitania;  this  was,  among  many  false  strokes,  the 
falsest  stroke  the  Germans  made,  converting  many 
waverers  to  the  Allied  cause.  East,  west,  north,  and 
south  was  a  great  company  of  those  ready  to  sym- 
pathize and  to  act  when  they  understood. 

There  must  have  been,  in  every  State  and  town 
and  village,  as  here  in  Mataquoit,  the  unthinking 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  221 

people,  smug,  comfortable,  narrow  folk  who  had  not 
happened  to  notice  the  war.  Doubtless  most  of  these 
would  call  themselves,  in  favored  phrase,  one  hun- 
dred per  cent  Americans,  but  what  Americans! 
"The  Stars  and  Stripes  afford  us  protection;  let  us 
eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  go  to  the  movies. 
Who  is  his  brother's  keeper?" 

There  were  hosts  of  German-Americans,  hot  at 
first  hi  defense  of  the  Vaterland,  sympathizing  with 
German  aims  and  rejoicing  in  the  sickening  tri- 
umphs, who  slowly  moved,  as  the  facts  of  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  became  known,  and  the  manner 
of  its  conduct,  toward  disillusionment  with  Prussia. 
Their  passive  renunciation  of  the  principles  of  au- 
tocracy developed  into  a  fine  and  positive  Ameri- 
canism when  we  declared  war,  April  6,  1917.  It  is 
said  that  in  the  middle  west  the  sons  of  German- 
Americans  are  swiftest  in  enlistment  of  all  America's 
sons. 

There  are,  of  a  certainty,  many  German-Ameri- 
cans, and  some  others,  who  are  disloyal.  The  spy 
record  is  written  elsewhere. 

There  were,  and  are,  many  pacifists,  exhorting, 
crying  out,  reproving  those  in  whom  the  conviction 
is  awake  and  stirring  that  America  must  rise  and 
help  or  go  forever  shamed.  These  the  pacifists 
treat  as  if  they  stood  upon  a  lower  plane  and  did  not 
care  for  peace  as  the  most  precious  of  all  earth's 
possessions,  as  if  they  were  militarists  and  blood- 
thirsty from  birth.  I  know  of  none  —  impassioned 
believers  in  the  creed  of  helping  at  this  crisis, 
sternly  resolved  that  we  shall  not  shirk  —  I  know 
of  none  who  fail  to  value  peace  as  earth's  supreme 
boon.  But  they  know,  and  I  know,  that  we  had  no 

\ 


222  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

choice.  One  resents  the  facile  superiority  of  these 
pacifists,  their  failure  to  grasp  the  nature  of  the 
crisis,  their  misty  thinking.  As  for  peace  — 

I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more. 

In  this  spring  of  1917  the  true  citizens  of  America 
can  breathe  more  freely.  We  are  no  longer  standing 
back. 

May  17. 

To-day,  with  many  of  my  fellow  citizens,  I  went 
to  the  railway  station  to  see  off  a  little  company  of 
volunteers  who  are  starting  for  a  training  camp. 
There  were  seven  in  all,  among  them  Al  Jenkins,  a 
lawless  youth  who  has  been  driving  the  grocery 
wagon  and  mercilessly  overspeeding  his  tired  horse ; 
Jake  Dennis,  the  prosperous  young  plumber,  who 
has  lately  been  assuming,  in  an  unpleasant  swagger, 
some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  nouveau  riche, 
and  with  reason;  and  Frank  Ames,  a  rakish  young 
cashier  in  the  bank.  They  wore  their  ordinary 
clothing  and  looked  as  they  always  look,  except  for 
their  eyes,  yet  I  could  not  help  thinking  that  some- 
thing of  the  village  slouch  had  gone  from  their 
walk;  and  in  spite  of  the  foolish  jests  that  passed 
between  them  and  the  bystanders  about  celebrating 
the  Fourth  of  July  in  Berlin  and  bringing  home  the 
Kaiser's  head,  a  mantle  of  dignity  seemed  to  fall 
from  them  over  the  shoulders  of  all  the  rough  youths 
in  the  crowd. 

We  said  good-by  with  many  cheers  and  Godspeeds 
done  in  slang.  I  joined  in  the  laughter  with  which 
we  sent  them  off,  but  there  was  a  blur  before  my 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  223 

eyes.  To  me  they  were  all  Jack;  each,  in  spite  of 
the  absolute  difference  in  mental  and  physical  qual- 
ity, seemed  to  wear  Jack's  face. 

I  was  surprised  when  it  was  all  over  to  find  that 
Tim  had  any  tail  left;  he  nearly  wagged  it  off.  As 
is  often  the  case,  I  felt  grateful  for  his  self-expres- 
sion of  me,  for  I  am  not  one  who  can  readily  show 
emotion,  especially  when  it  cuts  deep.  Wallace, 
who  was  there,  of  course,  made  every  lad  who  went 
feel  as  if  he  were  his  son ;  Wallace  never  had  a  son 
of  his  own.  Perhaps  if  he  had  he  could  not  have  held 
such  a  finely  protective,  paternal  relationship  to 
all  the  lads  of  Mataquoit.  I  sometimes  think  that 
no  man  has  known  the  depths  of  the  experience  of 
fatherhood  except  the  man  who  has  not  had  it. 

May  20. 

Still  I  fall  asleep  to  the  sound  of  footsteps  of 
passing  people,  blending  oftentimes  with  the  sound 
of  the  sea.  They  are  of  all  kinds,  —  old,  slow,  and 
staggering;  youthful  and  brisk;  firm,  as  of  middle 
age.  The  feet  of  the  old  and  of  children  keep  their 
wonted  pace,  but  I  detect  a  change  in  the  footsteps 
of  the  young,  which  grow  more  light,  alert,  and  swift, 
straggling  no  longer,  conscious  of  an  aim. 

As  I  listen,  I  lose  my  sense  of  the  actual,  for,  with 
those  that  sound  in  the  streets  of  Mataquoit,  I  hear 
the  footsteps  of  all  who  go  across  the  seas  to  fight 
for  liberty;  keeping  step;  going  to  help;  the  foot- 
steps of  a  great  army,  moving  toward  great  ends. 

Among  them  I  hear  most  clearly  Jack's,  though 
Jack  is  seldom  here;  it  is  odd,  but  there  has  always 
been  something  distinctive  about  his  footstep.  Since 
his  second  visit,  I  have  known  it  as  far  as  I  could 


224  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

hear  it,  for  a  certain  energy  and  decision  with  which 
his  foot  touches  the  ground. 

Then,  though  of  course  this  may  be  but  a  reflec- 
tion of  my  own  mood,  a  difference  comes  in  the  tread 
of  all  and  sundry,  old  and  young.  Though  they 
are  going  about  commonplace  errands,  giving  orders 
at  the  grocery,  looking  after  the  kindling,  there  is  a 
majesty  in  the  sound ;  it  becomes  the  tread  of  a  vast 
people,  an  innumerable  host,  who  have  made  a 
great,  disinterested  choice,  taking  on  a  new  meas- 
ure, beginning  to  step  in  unison,  marching  toward 
a  goal. 


XXVI 

May  22. 

The  beauty  of  earth's  most  tragic  May  encircles 
the  world,  running  here  in  swift  grasses  and  in  rip- 
ples of  blossom  over  marsh  and  hill.  Song  sparrows 
and  bluebirds  are  glad  without  reproof;  to-day  I 
heard  a  bob-o-link  in  a  green  meadow.  God  grant 
he  learn  nothing  of  the  war! 

That  old  sense  of  Mataquoit  as  an  individual 
entity  is  wholly  gone.  If  now  it  seems  to  itself  the 
center  of  a  universe,  it  is  a  universe  bound  together 
by  close  filaments,  —  so  close  that  if  one  be  broken, 
this  universe  will  fall  to  pieces.  Nearly  every  man 
is  busy,  weaving  threads  into  this  web;  the  daugh- 
ters of  Mataquoit  are  helping,  learning  to  weave  as 
never  before,  and  what  is  true  of  Mataquoit  is  true 
of  the  whole  country.  However  terrible  the  cause, 
I  feel  a  nation  about  me  growing  into  unity,  coming 
nearer  a  common  understanding  in  aim  and  in 
endeavor  than  it  has  ever  been  before,  its  varying 
nationalities,  its  interests  heretofore  straining  this 
way  and  that,  uniting  in  one  service.  Here  is  gain 
inestimable  that  must  never  be  lost. 

He  who  should  write  the  story  of  America's  re- 
sponse to  the  challenge  must  get  into  it  something 
of  the  sweep  and  breadth  of  the  country;  the  ques- 
tion, the  response,  everywhere,  from  the  spicy  air 
of  Maine  woods,  to  bland  California,  —  in  shop, 


226  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

ploughed  field,  and  Chinese  laundry,  in  summer 
homes  of  the  wealthy,  in  cabins  of  the  poor.  A 
great,  powerful  nation,  organized  for  peace,  turns  its 
energy,  its  industries,  its  whole  practical  and  the- 
oretical purpose,  into  military  activities,  for  an  ideal. 
A  sense  of  the  immensity  of  the  country,  the  great 
rolling  prairie  lands,  the  Oregon  forests,  the  splendid, 
uplifted  mountain  ranges  of  east  and  west,  must 
enter  into  an  interpretation  of  the  greatness  and 
of  the  dignity  of  the  task,  as  a  step  onward,  a  step 
upward.  This  moment  marks  a  definite  stage  of 
progress,  a  complete  forgetting,  for  the  time  at  least, 
of  our  old  sense  of  endless  rights,  of  privilege,  and 
an  entering  upon  a  finer  and  sadder  conception  of 
great  responsibility.  Civilization  itself  is  at  stake; 
democracy  is  at  stake.  With  clean  hands  we  go 
into  the  great  war  of  the  ages,  perhaps  the  last  great 
war  anywhere;  we  have  nothing  personal  to  gain; 
we  have  much  to  lose. 

It  makes  a  great  step  on  and  up  in  international 
statesmanship.  When  the  country  which  is,  in  a 
sense,  the  strongest,  has  the  most  in  the  way  of 
material  power  and  wealth,  deliberately  makes  this 
finer  choice,  it  seems  written  high,  in  letters  of  gold, 
for  all  the  nations  to  read,  that  man  is  his  brother's 
keeper,  nation  is  nation's  keeper. 

May  28. 

Billions  Brown  is  back  in  Mataquoit,  earlier  than 
he  has  ever  come  before.  The  little  army  of  men 
who  take  care  of  his  estate  is  being  mobilized,  but 
there  are  wide  gaps  in  it;  he  is  in  a  state  of  indig- 
nation over  the  lack  of  consideration  shown  by  the 
march  of  history  for  the  convenience  of  financiers. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  227 

He  sought  me  out  on  the  day  of  his  arrival,  a 
week  ago ;  evidently  he  thought  that  our  going  into 
the  war  was  the  result  of  my  evil  influence.  War 
was  out  of  date,  he  stormed;  America  had  no  busi- 
ness with  wars.  In  what  he  said,  with  unnecessary 
vehemence,  I  detected  that  narrow-minded  selfish- 
ness, that  failure  to  understand,  that  am-I-my- 
brother's-keeper  attitude  that  many,  even  in  aroused 
America,  still  hold.  I  wrestled  with  him  in  regard  to 
his  convictions,  but  in  vain.  I  was  unkind  enough 
to  wonder,  as  he  talked,  what  his  attitude  would  be 
if  there  were  immediate  profit  in  it  for  him,  if  he 
dealt  with  wares  of  war. 

Since  that  first  meeting  I  have  seen  him  nearly 
every  day ;  he  insists  on  taking  me  motoring,  though 
I,  who  need  exercise  to  keep  myself  sound  in  mind 
and  limb,  have  no  time  to  waste  on  automobiles. 
He  is  in  great  unrest  of  mind  and  of  body,  as  usual, 
working  harder  at  being  idle  than  any  one  I  have 
ever  seen,  and  he  is  disturbed  because  no  one  shares 
his  mood  of  wanting  to  play.  Each  day  his  resent- 
ment toward  the  war  grows  keener;  he  cannot  in- 
terpret it  save  as  something  brought  about  by  the 
politicians  for  gain;  other  motive  than  that  of 
barter  is  inconceivable  to  him.  His  sense  of 
America's  isolation  is  profound  and  triumphant ;  the 
sundering  seas  are  enough  to  keep  us  prosperous, 
apart.  To  hear  him  talk  one  would  think  that  he 
conceived  the  width  of  the  Atlantic  as  a  virtue  in 
himself. 

Katharine  will  be  home  next  week,  he  informed 
me  gruffly,  but  only  for  a  visit.  He  said  nothing  of 
Jack,  and  for  this  I  was  thankful. 


228  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

June  1. 

The  sight  of  uniforms,  the  sailors'  blue  and  the 
soldiers'  khaki,  on  peaceful  country  roads  or  wood- 
land paths,  and  in  village  squares,  is  something  to 
which  it  is  hard  to  become  accustomed.  The  shy 
look  of  the  American  youth  in  uniform;,  their  half- 
shamefaced  pride,  the  squared  shoulders,  stiffly 
held;  in  some,  a  touch  of  sheepishness,  show  how 
new  and  strange  is  this  unexpected  call  to  duty. 
Even  the  brief  training  already  given  has  changed 
the  oftentimes  shambling  gait  to  a  quick,  steady, 
marching  step;  they  are  beginning  to  walk,  the 
service  boys  of  Mataquoit  and  the  surrounding 
country,  as  if  conscious  of  a  goal. 

Yesterday  a  great  motor  truck  filled  with  soldiers 
and  their  belongings,  kettles,  brooms,  a  combination 
of  military  and  camp  accoutrements,  speeding 
through  the  main  street  of  Mataquoit,  brought 
the  war  home  to  me  as  few  things  have  done.  To- 
day a  group  in  khaki  marched  singing  through  the 
streets.  Armed  youths  are  guarding  the  railway 
bridges  beyond  the  town. 

Marching  beside  these  rough-hewn  young  coun- 
trymen, in  whose  faces  light  is  just  beginning  to 
glimmer,  or  pacing  beside  supply  farm  wagon  or 
motor  truck  on  armed  steeds,  I  see  the  young  cru- 
saders of  medieval  days,  —  the  souls  of  those  long 
gone  keeping  step  with  the  souls  of  those  who  are 
wakening  to-day,  moving,  as  of  old,  with  their  faces 
toward  the  east. 

June  3. 

Nothing  in  my  life  has  surprised  me  more  than 
the  way  in  which  this  generation,  which  we  had 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  229 

thought  pampered,  spoiled  by  a  life  made  too  easy, 
is  rising  to  meet  its  challenge;  and  the  challenge  is 
the  greatest  that  has  ever  come  to  any  generation. 
Its  response  will  be  one  of  the  great  wonders  of  all 
time.  Many  of  us  had  feared  that  the  fiber  of  the 
race  was  being  weakened  by  modern  systems  of 
education ;  if  so,  the  race  is  evidently  incomparably 
better  than  its  education. 

Young  men  everywhere  are  making  good;  if  the 
young  girls  have  as  yet  hardly  caught  their  stride, 
it  is  partly  because  they  have  lacked  opportunity. 
These  young  men  were  more  prepared  than  we  had 
thought;  out  of  athletics  and  summer  sports  they 
have  made  their  own  hardships,  through  games  and 
physical  feats,  of  walking,  climbing,  running.  They 
have  learned  how  to  struggle,  how  to  win  fairly,  how 
to  lose  generously  and  so,  all  unwitting,  have  made 
themselves  ready  in  body  for  unexampled  trial. 

And  in  spirit? 

Before  us  is  a  splendid  spectacle  of  youth  marching 
silently  with  steady  eyes  to  the  sacrifice,  animated 
by  some  faith  deeper  than  any  theories,  more  fun- 
damental than  any  array  of  words.  We  have  been 
surprised,  after  the  initial  shock  of  1914,  to  find 
that  the  spectacle,  for  all  the  awfulness,  has  more 
of  beauty  than  of  terror,  because  of  the  wonder  of 
self-abnegation  which  it  has  revealed.  In  this  lies 
the  promise  of  the  future  peace  of  the  world. 

This  will  be  for  all  time  a  shining  generation, 
facing  the  hardest,  making  the  supreme  sacrifice, 
gladly,  voluntarily,  —  many  of  them,  at  least.  It 
is,  I  say  it  with  all  reverence,  with  keen  realization 
of  the  unexampled  hardships  that  are  being  faced, 
a  chosen  generation,  in  that  its  duty  has  been  made 


230  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

plain  as  by  a  pillar  of  fire  by  night.  Remembering 
the  uncertain  voices  about  me  in  my  youth,  when 
none  knew  the  way,  nor  whether  there  was  a  way, 
I  could  find  it  in  my  heart  to  envy  those  who  now 
hear  the  one  clear  call. 

June  4. 

Fresh  on  the  heels  of  a  dispute  between  Adams 
Johnson  and  Joe  Darnley  over  the  ownership  of 
three  feet  of  land  at  the  edge  of  a  house  lot  comes 
Jack,  back  from  the  training  camp,  straight  as  a 
liberty  pole,  a  bit  leaner,  perhaps,  but  with  eyes 
even  brighter  than  before,  and  more  of  color  in  his 
face.  His  uniform  becomes  wonderfully  well  both 
his  body  and  his  soul. 

He  comes  home  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  life 
that  he  is  leading,  Spartan  though  it  be,  after  his 
over-coddled  existence  at  home,  and  full  of  en- 
thusiasm for  his  kind.  The  men,  he  tells  me,  are 
generous,  unselfish,  courageous.  He  is  going  into 
the  life  whole-heartedly,  making  friends  with  all 
and  sundry,  low  and  high,  ignorant  and  otherwise. 
His  conclusions  up  to  this  point  are  buoyantly  op- 
timistic; it  is  a  pleasure  to  live  and  to  work  with 
men  who  are  so  good.  He  is  glad  that  he  has  left 
college,  because  the  present  situation  gives  him  far 
wider  opportunity  for  acquaintance  with  his  kind. 

I  say  no  word  to  disturb  his  mood,  but  I  ponder 
over  my  stitches.  Yes,  men  are  good,  in  time  of 
stress,  of  tension,  when  something  calls  to  the 
deepest  that  is  in  them.  But  men  in  general,  in 
time  of  peace,  of  prosperity,  show  no  such  degree 
of  generosity,  unselfishness,  but  are  prone  to  be 
captious,  self-centered,  asking,  not  giving. 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  231 

June  7. 

One  who  sits,  as  I  do,  by  the  highway  with  half- 
open  door,  gleans  many  a  remark,  hears  many  a 
bit  of  anecdote  that  record  the  happenings  of  this 
moment  far  better  than  the  historians  of  the  future 
can  do.  Ripples  of  the  least  waves  betray  the  sweep 
of  the  great  tide;  innumerable  are  the  significant 
incidents  that  tell  the  story  of  how  we  go  to  war. 

Yesterday  I  heard  two  passers-by  talking  about 
a  Chinese  laundryman  in  Bangor  who  would  not 
claim  exemption  on  the  ground  that  he  is  not  really 
a  citizen,  but  insisted  on  going  to  war  for  Uncle 
Sam. 

Silas  Marks,  the  hotel  keeper,  who  came  corpu- 
lently  in  for  repairs  yesterday  afternoon,  told  me 
of  a  young  Idaho  farmer  who  sold  his  farm,  gave 
half  the  proceeds  to  the  government,  invested  the 
rest  in  Liberty  bonds  and  then  enlisted.  It  was  a 
tale  that  benefited  both  Silas  and  me,  quickening 
my  hopes  for  man  in  the  future.  "If  peradven- 
ture  — 

Another  neighbor  of  mine,  John  Rankin  of  the 
drug  store,  who  recently  motored  to  Boston  on  busi- 
ness, told  me  that  he  volunteered  to  carry  a  large 
supply  of  books  out  to  a  soldiers'  training  camp. 
His  motor  broke  down;  a  farmer,  learning  his  er- 
rand, came  to  the  rescue  with  a  team  of  horses. 
Somewhat  hesitatingly  Mr.  Rankin  offered  to  pay 
him ;  the  farmer  looked  at  him  —  and  swore  .  .  . 
swore  his  patriotism,  his  feeling  that  had  found  no 
expression,  his  wrath  at  being  offered  compensation 
for  such  a  task. 

Old  Mrs.  Abel,  a  seaman's  widow,  begins  to  knit 
sweaters  for  the  soldiers,  now  that  "our  boys"  are 


232  A   WORLD    TO    MEND 

going;  yet,  probably,  the  men  who  will  wear  these 
sweaters  will  be  far  less  related  to  her  than  the 
British  who  have  been  fighting  and  suffering  so 
long. 

Big  John,  the  half-Indian  fisherman  on  Hawk's 
Island,  has  pledged  one  day's  catch  each  week  to 
the  Red  Cross;  old  Joshua  Ridgway,  whose  purse 
strings  are  hard  to  loosen,  and  who  is  indeed  dis- 
satisfied that  this  is  not  the  American  Revolution, 
has  sent  a  substantial  subscription  to  the  same 
cause.  Even  Peter  Breed,  the  village  miser,  has 
come  tottering  up  with  his  mite. 

This  patriotism,  this  love  of  country,  so  quick, 
sensitive,  ready  to  rise  to  emergency,  so  quiescent 
on  ordinary  days,  how  can  we  stabilize  it?  How 
make  it  permanent?  I  find  my  Americanism  brave, 
confident,  assured,  in  this  growing  unity  and  aspira- 
tion as  we  make  ready  for  great  service,  yet  ques- 
tioning, oftentimes  discouraged  in  time  of  quiet, 
when  nothing  calls  to  the  greatest.  My  hope  of 
what  man  can  do  for  man  is  deepened  by  seeing 
what  is  offered  in  this  time  of  great  trial,  for  the 
response  to  the  need  of  the  hour  seems,  at  times, 
an  answer  to  many  of  the  questions  I  have  been 
asking  as  to  how  democracy  can  be  made  both  suc- 
cessful and  righteous.  There  is  abroad  in  the  land 
a  sense  of  the  larger  issue,  an  impersonality,  a  sub- 
ordination of  the  old  demand  for  one's  rights,  a 
searching  desire  only  to  find  one's  duty  and  do  it. 
Everybody  is  taking  on  some  of  the  traits  of  the 
chosen  few  on  whom  I  have  based  my  faith,  those 
people  whose  individual  characteristics  have  be- 
come articles  in  the  constitution  of  my  ideal  re- 
public. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND 


233 


Watching  these  developments  and  sharing  some 
of  them,  my  thought,  my  hope,  leap  forward.  If 
national  feeling  is  so  strong  as  it  shows  itself  to  be 
in  this  centralizing  of  our  thought  and  purpose,  the 
days  to  come  can  put  it  to  great  uses;  here  is  a 
patriotism  on  which  we  can  build  in  time  of  peace, 
if  such  time  ever  comes.  What  future  can  be  too 
glorious  for  a  country  that  can  do  this  great,  dis- 
interested thing,  do  it  not  only  by  act  of  govern- 
ment, but  by  glad  acquiescence  and  ready  will  of 
millions  of  its  citizens,  who  offer  their  strength  of 
mind  and  body  to  aid? 

June  5. 

All  over  the  country  to-day,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands, millions  of  young  men  go  to  enroll  themselves 
in  the  army,  which,  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes, 
is  to  enter  the  great  struggle  for  the  freedom  of 
mankind.  I  have  a  feeling  of  reverent  surprise  that 
in  this  vast  America,  pledged  to  the  ways  of  peace, 
the  conscription  law  could  have  gone  through  with 
hardly  an  audible  objection.  From  sea  to  sea  in 
this  land  whose  immensity  is  hard  to  realize,  even 
when  one  sees  the  swift  miles  flowing  past  in  rolling 
hills  and  sweeping  plains  and  climbing  ranges,  the 
people  have  risen  with  one  voice  of  mighty  assent 
to  the  great  purpose. 


XXVII 

June  12. 

As  this  cause  in  which  I  am  enlisted  becomes  one 
for  which  our  hosts  are  to  fight  in  open  field,  I  must 
examine  again  my  new-found  faith.  My  thought, 
my  endeavor,  which  had  seemed  isolated,  apart,  are, 
in  reality,  a  ripple  of  the  great  tide  which  is  rising 
slowly  along  all  shores  and  through  all  inlets  the 
wide  world  over;  the  President's  phrase,  "safe  for 
democracy,"  states  with  succinct  brevity  the 
thought  toward  which  our  minds  have  been  groping, 
as  the  central  issue  of  the  war  has  more  and  more 
revealed  itself.  With  the  overthrow  of  despotism 
in  Russia,  and  the  struggle  of  the  Russian  people 
for  self-controlled  freedom,  the  war  reveals  itself 
more  clearly  in  its  true  aspect  as  a  battle  for  democ- 
racy. Dimly,  from  the  very  beginning,  we  have 
felt  the  clash  between  two  antagonistic  principles; 
now,  history  is  defining  in  large  terms  the  cause  for 
which  we  serve.  As,  in  1848,  republican  fervor 
spread  through  Europe,  now,  partly  by  reason  of 
this  awful  conflict,  a  sense  of  responsibility  of  man 
for  man,  a  something  from  which  finer  government 
must  grow,  is  spreading  the  world  over.  There  is 
an  universal  enkindling;  the  great  period  of  the 
French  Revolution  pales  before  the  greatness  of 
these  days,  in  their  manifold  suggestions  of  the  way 
in  which  human  institutions  must  expand  to  make 
room  for  the  expanding  human  spirit.  National  life 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  235 

must  grow  greater;  that  old  doctrine  of  liberty, 
equality,  fraternity,  applied  to  international  rela- 
tions, will  bring  unimagined  opportunities,  un- 
imagined  obligations.  This  may  be  like  those 
geologic  moments  of  quick  development,  when, 
scientists  tell  us,  some  vast,  swift  impetus  carried 
growth  farther  forward  in  brief  periods  of  time  than 
unnumbered  ages  had  done. 

Thus  democracy,  in  common  use  as  a  word,  if 
not  as  a  fact,  since  my  boyhood  and  long  before, 
takes  on  a  wider  significance,  a  deeper  meaning;  it 
is  on  all  men's  lips.  With  sudden  sharpness  the 
question  comes:  What  is  democracy?  With  all  the 
world  I  must  arise  and  define  more  clearly  that  for 
which  we  are  fighting. 

Though  I  have  made  great  efforts  during  these 
last  months  to  understand,  I  find  myself  only  at 
the  beginning  of  my  lesson  of  democracy,  as  yet  in 
the  kindergarten.  I  find  it  hard,  even  as  Christi- 
anity is  hard,  and  not  distinct  from  it;  I  find  it 
more  absorbing,  more  full  of  challenge  day  by  day. 
The  very  conception  is-  an  essentially  spiritual  one, 
claiming  one's  entire  devotion,  and  full  surrender 
to  its  high  claim.  The  cause  is  so  great  and  so  diffi- 
cult of  achievement  that,  as  our  armies  move  to 
battle,  I  tremble,  not  for  success  in  the  fields  of 
France,  but  for  the  fields  of  the  future.  The  pa- 
tience that  is  necessary  for  any  true  living  of  the 
creed,  the  love  of  human  kind,  the  disinterested- 
ness, stagger  me. 

This  true  democracy,  implying  in  each  adherent 
an  interest  in  his  neighbor's  destiny  not  unlike  that 
in  his  own,  demands  a  subordination  of  the  unim- 
portant to  essentials,  a  willingness  to  waive  one's 


236  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

minor  prejudices,  to  drop  one's  folly  of  preferences 
and  exclusions,  of  restricted  visiting  lists  and  select 
clubs,  of  boarding  schools  where  privileged  young 
are  shut  away  from  their  kind.  Surely  whatever 
high  standards  we  have  should  be  so  high  that  they 
could  be  carried  to  mart  and  market  place,  among 
plain  people,  gaining  strength  wherever  battle  has 
to  be  done  for  them,  benefiting  all  mankind.  As 
genuine  democracy  calls  for  the  surrender  of  all 
claim  for  special  class  or  organization,  it  calls  also 
for  the  checking  of  undue  expenditure,  of  the  dis- 
play of  wealth  in  rich  food  and  clothing;  it  calls 
for  self-abnegation,  utmost  service,  work  with  one's 
fellows,  full  allegiance  to  that  inner  state,  not  outer, 
made  of  the  alliance  of  human  souls  in  high  unity 
of  aim.  Embracing  democracy  is  a  supreme  act 
of  faith  in  humanity. 

So  runs  my  thought  when  I  walk  by  the  sea  and 
only  the  horizon  line  bounds  my  vision;  but  what 
of  democracy  in  its  actual  working,  in  the  attitude 
of  ordinary  citizens  toward  their  ordinary  duties? 
What  of  democracy  as  practised  in  Mataquoit? 
There  are  moments  when  I  want  to  go  out  like 
some  ancient  prophet,  preaching  in  wilderness, 
street,  and  market,  calling  for  repentance  from 
transgression,  crying  out  that  men  shall  not  fight 
and  die  for  such  a  state  of  things  as  exists  here. 
Then  the  wiser  and  more  disciplined  man  within 
me  reminds  me  that  my  ledger  has  an  asset  side, 
and  advises  search  to  see  what  finenesses,  what  gen- 
erosities, what  instances  of  good  intent,  what  gal- 
lant carrying  of  responsibilities,  I  can  set  down  here 
under  the  actual  working  of  this  order;  advises, 
too,  closer  scrutiny  of  the  other  column,  to  discover 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  237 

if  any  of  these  items  can  be  turned  into  assets. 
Am  I  equal  to  this  task  of  spiritual  mathematics? 
From  column  II  what  can  I  carry  over  to  column  I? 

I  II 

Assets  Liabilities 

Good  nature,  friendli-  Lack  of  intellectual 
ness,  hail-fellow-well-  ideal,  of  desire  or 
met  tendency.  power  to  think. 

T.    .  ,.  11,   Bucolic  certainty,  ignor- 

Desire   to   live   and   let  .,    1r 

v  ance,  conceiving  itself 

live.  .    .. 

as  inspiration. 

Quickly  roused  sym-  Selfishness;  desire  for 
pathy  with  suffering,  gain  at  all  costs. 

when     once     this     is  T  r,         r  ,    j 

,  Laziness,  often  of  body, 

known.  f.          f       .    , 

more    often    of    mind 

In      general,      business       and  souL 

squareness    and    fair-  Passivity.      Resignation 
ness.  plays  too  large  a  part 

in  our  democracy. 
Sense  of  binding  nature 

of  an  agreement.  Men  stand  patient  un- 

der wrong  conditions, 
Hatred  of  force.  instead  of  creating 

better. 

Love   of   country.     Pa-  . 

trintiqm  Feeling  that  all  fault  is 

U1UUO1U.  -  - 

the  other  man  s.  Ten- 

A  deep  consciousness  of  dency  to  be  critics,  to 
being  free  men.  tel1  wn&t  is  wrong, 

rather  than  to  do 
Belief  in  fair  play.  what  is  right. 


238  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

As  I  look  I  see  little  that  could  be  transferred 
from  II  to  I;  and,  seeing  that  I  have  left  at  the 
bottom  of  the  page  no  room  for  balancing,  I  am  glad 
to  carry  over  the  account; there  are  many  items  yet 
to  be  entered.  All  fastidiousness  and  minor  dis- 
tastes apart,  I  find  much  whereon  to  build  enduring 
government.  Chief  among  the  factors  is  this  sense 
of  fair  play,  widespread,  though  not  universal,  and 
stopping  usually  short  of  generosity.  It  shows  itself 
largely  in  a  business  sense  of  fairness  in  human  deal- 
ings ;  and  our  hope  for  the  future  will  depend  largely 
on  the  extent  to  which  we  can  make  widespread  a 
deeper  knowledge  of  that  which  is  unfair  in  man's 
relation  to  man. 

If  the  attitude  of  citizens  toward  their  ordinary 
responsibilities  could  be  the  same  as  their  attitude 
toward  the  huge  unprecedented  war-task  which  has 
been  thrust  upon  them  in  the  name  of  the  political 
faith  they  hold,  there  would  be  cause  for  great  en- 
couragement. War's  obvious  needs  bespeak  the 
subtler  needs  of  peace. 

June  15. 

The  name  of  Billions  Brown  was  halfway  down 
the  list  of  those  to  whom  I  was  directed  to  go,  to 
ask  money  for  war  charities;  I  went  to  him  to-day. 

"I'll  not  give  you  a  cent,"  he  stormed.  "I  don't 
approve  of  war." 

"Billions,"  said  I,  "old  Mrs.  Mooney,  who  takes 
in  washing  (which  she  cannot  see  to  do)  came  to 
me  the  other  day  and  brought  me  ten  cents.  She 
had  been  told  that  I  was  collecting  for  the  war 
sufferers,  and  this  was  the  price  of  her  Sunday 
night's  supper.  You  are  a  successful  financier,  but 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  239 

Mrs.  Mooney  will  be  a  far  better  financier  in  King- 
dom Come  than  you  are." 

He  scowled  and  gave  me  a  check  for  a  thousand 
dollars,  which  shows  that  he  is  in  a  disturbed  state 
of  mind.  No  wonder  that  he  is  bewildered,  for  he 
and  all  that  he  stands  for  of  physical  and  material 
growth  in  the  country  have  been  brought  to  a  stand- 
still by  the  turn  affairs  have  taken,  have  been 
brought  to  naught  unless  this  eyes  open  to  a  sense 
of  other  values.  I  have  hopes  that  he  will  yet 
squeeze  his  somewhat  bulky  figure  through  the  eye 
of  the  needle. 

Roses  are  blossoming  everywhere,  syringas  are  in 
bloom;  unnumbered  fragrances  of  grass  and  flower 
steal  through  the  sea-scented  air  of  Mataquoit.  It 
is  full  summer,  but  a  summer  that  seems  indefi- 
nitely removed  from  the  lonely  center  of  conscious- 
ness where  each  one  of  us  waits,  trying  to  think  out 
the  world  problem. 

June  16. 

Again  we  went  to  the  station  to  say  good-by  to 
our  recruits,  this  time  a  company  of  drafted  men, 
thirty-four  in  all.  Some  of  them  I  know;  some 
were  country  boys  whom  I  had  never  seen;  a  few 
of  them  were  shabby  to  raggedness  and  a  few  ele- 
gant with  all  that  was  latest  and  most  "exclusive" 
in  Sands'  Emporium.  Their  youth  and  callowness, 
their  evident  lack  of  realization  of  the  magnitude  of 
the  task  before  them,  were  pathetic.  The  crude  air 
of  carrying  it  off,  making  nothing  of  it,  slapping 
one  another  humorously  on  the  shoulder,  tilting 
hats  to  a  rakish  angle  indicative  of  extreme  self- 
assurance,  was  distinctively  American,  perhaps 


240  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

lesser  American.  How  much  they  have  to  learn, 
what  need  they  have  to  grow,  before  they  will  be 
ready ! 

Yet  there  is  a  touching  simplicity  in  their  willing- 
ness; they  go  uncomplainingly,  but  some,  at  least, 
have  fear  in  their  eyes.  .  .  .  Something  made  one 
catch  one's  breath  at  the  sight  of  them,  even  though 
both  Jack  and  Tim  were  there,  inspiring  courage, 
bringing  now  and  then  a  shout  of  merry  laughter 
from  the  crowd.  Jack  has  taught  Tim  to  stand  and 
salute  the  man  in  khaki;  Tim  would  gladly  enlist 
if  he  could,  but  Tim  is  a  professional  militarist  and 
would  not  really  count  among  crusaders. 

It  is  superb  and  it  is  marvellous  that,  over  all 
this  vast  country,  there  has  been  no  riot;  hardly 
have  there  been  protests  against  conscription,  only 
a  quiet  taking  up  of  obvious  duty.  What  is  this 
power  making  itself  manifest?  Is  it  patriotism, 
deeper  and  more  widespread  than  we  have  known? 
Is  it  Christianity,  profounder  than  words  or  con- 
scious thought?  Doubtless  for  many,  perhaps  for 
the  majority,  it  is  yielding  to  authority;  but  that 
authority  is  deeper  than  mere  power  of  govern- 
ment; there  is  in  it  the  weight  of  public  opinion 
throughout  the  country.  So  is  freedom  justified  of 
her  children.  This  one  fact  of  the  readiness  with 
which  men  flock  to  the  colors  is  more  compelling 
evidence  of  our  unity  than  we  have  ever  had  before ; 
it  brings  the  balance  overwhelmingly  on  the  asset 
side  of  my  account  in  democracy. 

Whatever  the  reasons  for  quick  response  to  the 
mandate,  these  men  can  hardly  fail  to  come  out  of 
this  great  service,  if  come  they  do,  without  a  deep- 
ened sense  of  life  and  the  aims  of  life.  What  sol- 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  241 

diers  they  will  make  in  the  service  of  peace,  they 
who  so  obediently  answer  call  to  war!  They  go  to 
face  a  discipline  that  will  make  them  men ;  to  learn, 
tragically,  a  deeper  lesson  than  all  the  untroubled 
years  have  brought.  What  promise  is  here  for  the 
future,  if,  in  the  days  that  follow  the  great  war, 
we  can  but  make  the  clarion  call  for  service  as  clear 
as  this  which  sounds  to-day! 

Coming  home  after  the  last  boyish  hand  had 
waved  out  of  the  last  car  window,  my  thoughts  ran 
back  to  the  past  as  well  as  forward  to  the  future. 
Of  those  who  builded  America  it  can  be  said  that 
their  accomplishment  is  greater  than  they  dreamed. 
They  did  not  know,  those  grave  fathers  of  the  young 
republic,  how  boundlessly  far  their  deeds  would  go; 
how  far  the  words  that  they  were  saying  would  be 
carried.  They  did  not  dream  of  their  young  de- 
scendants, going  out,  giving  their  youth,  their  fair- 
ness, their  passion,  their  desire,  to  hand  on  the  torch 
of  liberty,  to  carry  it  round  the  world. 

June  20. 

One  may  tell  the  national  story  in  terms  of  con- 
scription, unprotested,  sweeping  the  nation;  one 
may  tell  it  in  terms  of  old  Mrs.  Markham,  my 
widowed  neighbor,  unable  to  buy  yarn  to  finish  the 
tenth  pair  of  stockings  she  has  knit  for  the  soldiers. 
It  was  my  hostess,  the  Widow  Frayne,  who  told  me, 
and  who  carried  out  my  commission  to  supply  her 
present  and  future  need. 

Even  Mrs.  Frayne's  sharp  and  inquisitive  eye  has 
become  an  asset  for  the  government;  she  is  merci- 
lessly aware  of  what  every  one  in  Mataquoit  has 
done  or  left  undone.  No  sergeant  in  khaki  could 


242  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

be  more  indefatigable  in  searching  out  slackers  and 
haling  them  before  that  bar  of  justice,  her  tongue. 

Yet  I  marvel  increasingly  at  the  mysteries  of 
human  nature,  as  the  war,  like  a  searchlight,  throws 
them  into  glaring  relief,  high  light,  and  deep 
shadow.  Widow  Frayne  herself  sits  ceaselessly 
knitting,  wearing  out  her  forefinger,  and,  at  times, 
her  temper,  in  making  stockings  for  the  soldiers. 
Something  in  her,  hitherto  untouched,  is  quivering 
into  life,  a  submerged  tenderness,  a  sympathy  with 
her  kind.  She  who  has  always  spoken  with  utmost 
bitterness  of  her  young  neighbors  in  Mataquoit, 
deriding  Phil  Thompson  for  his  fondness  for  flirting, 
and  Alec  Feeney  for  his  recklessness  in  spending  his 
father's  money,  will  have  no  word  spoken  against 
Philip  Thompson  and  Alexander  Feeney,  American 
soldiers.  I  quoted  last  night  some  old  remarks  of 
hers  as  if  they  were  my  own,  and  she  flew  at  me, 
chastising  me  with  the  valor  of  her  tongue  for  being 
uncharitable.  Even  Tom  Hanks,  the  ragman,  whom 
I  have  put  down  in  my  studies  in  democracy  as 
incapable  of  being  appealed  to  by  any  but  personal 
motives,  has  brought  tarnished  pennies  and  nickels, 
tied  up  in  a  red  bandana  handkerchief,  to  contrib- 
ute to  the  local  Red  Cross  work.  So,  many  of  my 
neighbors,  up  and  down  the  street,  are  wakening  to 
a  conception  of  something  greater  than  their  own 
firesides. 

What  is  it?  Undoubtedly  the  thought  of  youth 
facing  death. 

Why  can  not  the  tenderness  be  enlisted  for  the 
days  of  peace?  Why  may  it  not  always  be  at  the 
service  of  the  young,  who  face  a  something  more 
perplexing,  more  awful  than  death,  —  life?  Many 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  243 

and  many  a  manifestation  of  folly  Widow  Frayne 
undoubtedly  sees,  as  she  sits,  sharp-eyed  and  un- 
relenting, by  the  window:  flirting,  giggling,  stolen 
kiss  as  the  unchaperoned  of  the  village  walk  up  and 
down,  or  the  unsteady  steps  of  lads  who  have  found 
something  to  fuddle  their  brains  even  in  prohibi- 
tionist Maine.  What  she  fails  to  see  is  that  these 
young  are  shaken,  driven  this  way  and  that  by  the 
mysterious,  dimly  understood  forces  of  existence. 

The  beneficent  power  of  human  nature  when  it 
is  stirred  to  its  depths,  —  how  can  we  keep  it  for- 
ever wakened,  astir  in  the  interests  of  life? 


XXVIII 

June  23. 

Katharine  is  at  home  for  a  visit;  she  came  to  see 
me,  bringing  Clare  with  her.  My  thoughts  about 
democracy  and  my  duty  to  my  fellow  man  flew 
swiftly  out  of  the  window,  and  it  was  with  diffi- 
culty that  I  prevented  the  Congregational  minister's 
boot,  on  which  I  was  working  from  following,  and 
landing  in  my  violet  bed.  It  is  not  easy  to  think 
about  either  abstract  questions  or  boots  when 
Katharine  and  Clare  are  in  the  room. 

Katharine  was  simply  dressed,  but  with  no  sug- 
gestion of  a  nurse's  uniform;  she  is  unchanged, 
except  that  her  inner  self  shines  out  a  bit  more 
clearly.  Her  steady  eyes  met  mine  with  less  of 
question  in  them,  and  her  mouth  wore  something 
of  the  firm,  sweet,  disciplined  look  of  old  Grand- 
mother Brown's.  They  sat  in  my  two  armchairs 
which,  throughout  the  winter,  have  held,  in  the 
forms  of  my  neighbors,  many  of  the  hopes  of  the 
new  democracy.  Clare  hung  on  her  sister's  lips  as 
she  told  of  her  winter,  treasuring  every  word. 

Katharine  has  of  course  not  received  full  nurse's 
training  and  is  technically  not  ready  to  go,  but  the 
distinguished  physician  under  whom  she  is  working 
is  equipping  a  unit  for  immedate  service  in  France, 
and  he  has  all  but  promised  that  Katharine  shall  go 
with  him.  What  this  means  in  recognition  of  her 
unusual  ability  and  her  character  Katharine  did 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  245 

not,  of  course,  say,  but  I  know.  If  there  is  still  any 
element  of  uncertainty  in  this  eminent  medical 
mind  as  to  permitting  so  great  an  irregularity,  I 
feel  no  doubt  as  to  the  result ;  I  know  my  Katharine. 

Billions  humbly  inquired,  when  I  met  him  later 
in  the  afternoon,  whether  Katharine  had  confided 
to  me  anything  about  her  future  plans;  he  would 
not  deign  to  ask  her.  When  I  told  him  he  turned 
red,  then  white. 

"I  suppose,"  he  said  wrathfully,  "that  she  has 
some  romantic  notion  in  her  head.  She  thinks  that 
young  fool  Sands  will  be  wounded  over  there  and 
she  will  be  called  upon  to  nurse  him." 

"She  thinks  nothing  of  the  kind,  Billions,"  I  told 
him,  "and  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself." 

June  28. 

Even  now  sometimes,  as  I  drive  my  nails,  I 
reproach  myself  for  the  folly  of  this  thing  that  I  am 
doing  in  separating  myself  from  old  associations 
and  old  relationships.  My  experiment  is  a  bit  crude, 
perhaps,  but  it  represents  my  plunge  into  reality. 
A  man,  before  he  goes  out,  should  arrive  at  some 
understanding  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives ;  had  I 
not  jolted  myself  out  of  my  earlier  surroundings  I 
should  never  have  taken  sufficiently  into  account 
actual  phenomena,  events,  happenings,  the  world 
and  the  people  in  it.  Surely  I  have  made  some 
progress,  outgrowing  my  complete  absorption  in 
books  and  mere  ideas,  that  inward  look,  which 
failed  to  get  true  perspectives. 

I  am  glad  that  I  am  going  through  this  great  na- 
tional experience  of  war  in  my  present  surroundings. 
The  homely,  trivial  detail,  the  homespun  happen- 


246  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

ings  of  common  American  life  here  in  Mataquoit 
bring  me  nearer  than  my  old  world  would  have  done 
to  the  great  glory  of  understanding  and  of  sharing 
the  willing  sacrifice  of  America  to-day,  as  at  last 
we  find  our  place  among  the  nations. 

Driving  my  pegs,  I  am  haunted  by  imaginary 
pictures  of  our  war  vessels  crossing  the  seas,  bris- 
tling with  guns,  moving  in  swift,  even  flight  across 
the  waves.  One  of  them  will  some  day  take  Jack, 
another,  Katharine;  I  pound  my  finger  in  impa- 
tience of  longing  to  take  that  path  with  them.  Like 
unnumbered  others,  I  want  to  serve  where  the  need 
is  greatest  and  most  obvious.  Yet  I  remind  myself, 
and  with  another  little  whack  of  my  hammer,  that 
there  is  a  front  trench  here  as  well  as  in  France 
and  in  Flanders.  We  must  all  be  somewhere  in  this 
battle  line  for  democracy,  but  perhaps  the  hardest 
part  of  the  fighting  will  not  come  in  the  battle- 
fields; there  is  endless  opportunity  for  those  who 
stay  at  home.  Now,  when  we  are  shocked,  startled 
out  of  our  petty  absorptions,  wakened  to  a  deeper 
personality,  lifted  above  ourselves,  I,  with  others, 
must  be  learning  how  to  carry  the  great  faith,  the 
great  discipline,  the  great  and  disinterested  service 
on  into  the  coming  democracy  of  the  years  of  peace. 

July  3. 

Jack  will  be  going  soon ;  home  on  leave  for  a  few 
days,  he  tells  me  that  he  is  waiting  orders  that  may 
come  any  moment  now.  I  should  be  an  unhappy 
man  if  he  did  not  go  and  go  voluntarily;  I  should 
have  the  feeling  of  having  again  failed  in  life. 

I  brace  myself  in  my  cobbler's  chair  and  work 
more  assiduously  at  my  stitching  than  I  have  ever 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  247 

done.  Few  days  are  left,  and  the  moments  that  can 
be  counted  mine  are  fewer  still.  Their  exceeding 
preciousness  weighs  upon  me  with  such  a  sense  of 
what  must  be  said  that  I  find  myself  inarticulate 
when  Jack  is  here.  After  all,  what  do  words  count? 

Whether  Jack  had  managed  to  secure  as  his  time 
of  leave  these  days  of  Katharine's  visit  home  I  do 
not  know,  but  I  am  sure  they  had  not  planned  to 
meet  in  my  shop.  Yet  here  they  met  this  morning, 
as  on  the  first  day  of  their  acquaintance ;  Katharine 
had  stopped  to  bring  me  a  message  from  Grand- 
mother Brown  in  regard  to  the  right  treatment  of 
rheumatism.  Knowing  my  place  as  a  member  of 
the  older  generation  I  kept  silence  and  applied  my- 
self to  my  needle  while  they  talked  or  tried  to  talk. 
They  had  singularly  little  to  say  to  each  other  or 
to  me,  they  who  had  chattered  so  freely,  asked  so 
many  questions,  demanded  so  many  opinions  a 
year  ago.  The  significance  of  this  I  realize;  they  are 
going  to  act  and  have  small  need  for  words. 

I  have  known  little  of  outer  event  in  their  story, 
though  I  have  gathered  much  from  reading  Jack's 
mind  and  moods,  which  are  almost  shamelessly 
transparent.  From  the  first,  his  days  of  suspense 
have  told  upon  me,  his  moments  of  joy  I  have 
shared,  though  he  has  said  nothing  of  them.  The 
glimpses  they  have  had  of  each  other  have  been  few 
and  far  between,  and  now  Billions  has  decreed  that 
Jack  shall  not  be  received  at  Round  Towers;  he  told 
me  so  himself.  That  the  two  love  each  other  deeply 
I  am  aware;  I  would  not  stop  it  if  I  could,  in  spite 
of  Billions'  feeling;  it  could  no  more  be  checked 
than  could  sap  mounting  in  a  tree.  But  I  can  not 
put  this  down  in  words;  I  never  wrote  a  love  story 


248  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

and  would  not  write  this  even  if  I  had  the  power ;  it 
would  be  sacrilege. 

When  they  did  find  their  tongues  they  talked 
gaily,  comparing  details  of  accouterment,  one  stoutly 
upholding  the  virtue  of  khaki,  one  of  white  linen. 
Through  it  all  ran  the  glory  and  the  poignancy  of 
the  thought  that  it  was  probably  their  last  meeting 
before  going  their  different  ways  in  sailing  to  the 
other  side.  The  young,  if  I  may  borrow  one  of  Jack's 
expressions,  are  game ;  I  doubt  if  anything  so  merry 
as  their  laughter  had  ever  rung  out  in  my  little  shop ; 
yet  Tim  crept  up  and  licked  my  hand. 

They  went  away  together,  and  my  last  glimpse 
of  Jack  showed  white  young  lips  trembling  on  the 
verge  of  speech.  I  thought  that  they  were  wholly 
gone  as  I  turned  my  needle  and  my  whole  attention 
to  confirming  some  stitches  on  a  bit  of  Jack's  sol- 
dier outfit,  thinking  proudly  that  never  in  my  early 
life  had  I  done  anything  so  useful,  —  when  I  heard 
a  murmur  of  voices,  after  a  long  silence,  from  the 
bench  under  the  pine  tree  near  my  window. 

"No,"  said  Katharine's  voice,  ringing  a  bit  more 
clearly,  I  fancy,  than  she  had  intended.  "It  might 
hinder,  if  I  should  want  to  work  under  the  Red 
Cross  over  there;  they  won't  let  you,  if  you  have 
father,  or  brother  over  there,  or  any  other  —  en- 
tangling alliance." 

"But  Katharine,"  Jack  was  saying,  in  a  voice  that 
cracked  a  bit,  "will  you,  if  I  come  back?"  I  could 
not  close  my  window  and  perforce  heard  Katharine's 

"Perhaps,  if  7  come  back." 

They  kept  step  as  they  went  away  down  the  street, 
as  befitted  two  who  have  enlisted  in  the  great  battle 
for  democracy.  There  was  a  splendor  of  life  and  of 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  249 

strength  about  them  as  they  walked  together, 
stored-up  energy,  potential  power,  sheer  force  of 
nerve  and  of  muscle,  as  if  all  the  prosperous  years 
had  been  accumulating  in  these  and  their  like  rich 
resources  for  the  hour  of  need.  Those  two  were 
symbols  of  my  America,  going  to  the  help  of  the 
world. 

They  had  much  to  give,  their  youth,  their  joy, 
their  strength,  their  beauty,  much  to  sacrifice;  I 
envied  them.  I  hope  it  was  not  because  I  am  safe, 
am  fifty-odd  and  lame,  am  kept  by  outer  force  from 
doing  what  they  are  doing  so  royally  that  I  envy 
them;  I  think  that  my  envy  is  real.  Ah,  these 
young,  with  their  baptism  of  fire  and  flame  and  suf- 
fering! Was  ever  love  so  tragic  or  so  great  as  love 
in  this  generation? 

July  8. 

As  one  recalls  the  changes  wrought  by  the  war, 
and  the  signs  of  change,  nothing  seems  more  signifi- 
cant than  the  look  in  the  eyes  of  people,  —  the 
greatest  change  of  all.  The  young  men  already  in 
khaki,  and  the  young  men  behind  counters  who 
know  that  they  must  go  wear  a  wholly  different  ex- 
pression from  that  to  which  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed in  young  men.  There  is  a  depth  in  the  eye, 
a  something  dim  but  very  real  back  of  the  surface 
glance.  Called  suddenly  from  our  bustling,  external 
life  to  face  the  eternal  verities,  they  wear  a  look  of 
hushed  awe  and  surprise. 

Young  Andy  Johns  in  the  real-estate  office,  silent ; 
the  Owen  boy,  drafted  but  not  yet  assigned,  going 
about  the  streets  with  a  waiting  look  in  his  face;  the 
country  lad  I  watched  on  a  street  corner  on  a  day 


250  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  parade,  with  his  head  in  relief  as  if  carved  by 
an  idealist  artist,  such  as  St.  Gaudens,  —  eyes  far- 
seeing,  young  lips  quivering  into  firm  control,  —  all 
wear  a  look  of  surrender  to  some  fine  inward  guid- 
ance, and  a  look  of  non-surrender  forever  to  that 
external  force  which  is  trying  to  establish  itself  all 
over  the  world. 

The  eyes  of  the  older  men  have  altered  too ;  there 
is  in  them  something  wistful,  noncommittal,  as  if 
all  life  were  at  some  deep  pause.  I  asked  Thomas 
Shaw,  a  local  builder,  how  the  war  had  affected  his 
business;  he  said  simply:  "Killed  it,"  but  with  a 
look  as  if  it  mattered  little.  Contractor  Elting  was 
talking  with  him,  urging  against  some  enterprise 
which  the  two  were  contemplating  together;  it  was 
too  great  a  risk;  no  one  could  foresee  the  end  of 
this;  what  he  said  was  commonplace  —  he  is  a  com- 
monplace man  —  but  the  common  words  seemed  to 
echo  far  off,  almost  at  the  end  of  things.  The  faces 
of  both  were  as  the  faces  of  men  who  have  watched 
kingdoms  fade  and  die;  the  inexorable  greatness 
of  life  is  thrusting  itself  upon  them  in  years  when 
one  is  slow  to  learn. 

The  women's  eyes  have  changed  less;  they  are 
nearer  always  the  great  issues  of  life  and  death.  I 
see  apprehension  in  many  a  mother's  face,  and  great 
pride.  The  sorrowful  exultation  of  my  neighbor, 
Mrs.  Lent,  in  the  son  who  is  now  at  the  front  in 
France,  the  son  who  was  wild  and  a  bit  bad,  is 
significant;  she  had  never  before  been  able  to  be 
proud  of  him.  The  eyes  of  mothers  the  world 
over  must  look  much  the  same  now,  the  one  differ- 
ence being  the  question  as  to  whether  their  sons  are 
going  or  have  gone. 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  251 

The  eyes  of  the  young  girls  are  different;  they 
have  a  kindled  look  of  waiting  that  is  not  quite 
waiting.  It  is  in  many  cases  eagerness  to  help; 
in  some,  sympathetic  understanding  of  the  world 
tragedy  and  of  individual  tragedies  that  have  come 
within  their  ken;  in  some,  already,  it  is  sorrow  of 
those  who  have  come  within  the  shadow. 

The  eyes  of  older  folk  and  young  have  become 
vistas,  wherein  one  sees  far-reaching  paths,  leading 
on  and  up,  for  the  treading  of  human  kind. 


July  30. 

Our  war  nurse  has  sailed  away  upon  a  liner  which 
is  to  have  a  military  escort.  I  went  to  see  her  off; 
her  father  would  not  go. 

"I  won't  go  near  it,"  said  Billions,  speaking  of  the 
ship  whose  name  he  had  just  learned  through  his 
daughter,  yet  he  looked  sorry;  the  trouble  with 
Billions  is  that  he  looked  sorry  for  himself. 

"Who's  paying  the  girl's  expenses?"  he  asked 
suddenly;  I  told  him  that  she  was  earning  her  way 
to  the  front;  an  organization  had  been  formed  to 
defray  the  costs  of  the  unit,  headed  by  the  physi- 
cian who  had  once  been  Grandmother  Brown's  tow- 
headed  protege.  I  did  not  tell  him  that  Katharine's 
personal  outfit,  or  most  of  it,  had  been  purchased 
with  the  old  lady's  money;  this  acceptance  was  a 
gracious  thing  on  the  part  of  the  girl ;  Grandmother 
Brown  had  tried  to  enlist  in  all  ways  that  are  open 
to  a  woman  of  seventy-five. 

She  was  at  the  dock  when  I  reached  it.  waiting  to 
see  her  granddaughter  sail;  she  had  driven  down 
in  a  taxicab,  showing  a  high  degree  of  courage  in 


252  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

trusting  herself  to  a  machine  which  was  known  only 
to  be  abhorred.  With  her  was  Clare. 

"Isn't  she  great?"  said  Clare.  Clare  uses  freely 
the  one  adjective  of  her  generation. 

"Yes,  she's  a  good  girl,"  said  Grandmother  Brown. 

The  picture  is  clear  in  my  mind  of  the  vessel  slip- 
ping out  of  its  berth,  with  the  green  water  churning 
at  its  sides;  of  the  half -laughing,  slightly  defiant 
face,  the  head  thrown  a  little  back  as  she  sailed 
away ;  her  clear  and  sunny  eyes  wore  no  look  of  fear 
or  of  question. 

A  memory  of  a  Greek  grave  relief  came  back  to 
me,  a  sculptured  relief  of  a  maiden  whose  lifted 
finger  seems  about  to  raise  a  latch.  In  Katharine's 
eyes  as  in  hers  was  a  look  of  one  for  whom  great 
doors  are  about  to  open ;  God  grant  these  doors  open 
upon  further  life,  not  death.  There  was  that  in  my 
throat  unbecoming  a  man  and  a  cobbler. 

Remembering  the  look  upon  her  face  I  can  say: 
"So  much  of  her  is  mine,"  for  she  told  me,  in  a  note 
which  I  am  keeping  in  my  ledger,  that  but  for  me 
she  would  never  have  gone,  never  have  known  or 
cared. 

Here  is  my  decoration,  my  croix-de-guerre. 

Jack  has  gone,  too.  When  and  how  the  transport 
with  my  boy  slipped  out  of  New  York  harbor  I 
do  not  know;  America  has  learned  the  hard  lesson 
of  silence,  and  in  secrecy  and  silence  her  sons  depart. 

So  they  go,  my  two.  They  are  not  mine  in  any 
worldly  sense,  and  yet  I  give  them.  Truly  I  have 
grown  rich  in  this  year  in  which  I  turned  my  back 
upon  my  worldly  possessions;  my  seeming  loss  has 
meant  great  gain;  for  the  whole  world  I  would  not 
barter  what  these  months  have  brought. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  253 

Those  two  are  symbols,  of  youth,  of  joy,  and  love, 
in  willing  sacrifice,  symbols  of  what  America  is  will- 
ing to  do,  —  of  this  greater  America,  rising  out  of 
her  wheat  fields,  her  gold  mines,  her  riches  innumer- 
able, to  offer  that  which  is  more  precious  than  all 
her  boundless  possessions,  her  young. 


XXIX 

August  4. 

My  young  crusaders  sail  away  to  help  in  this 
cruel  conflict. 

This  is  a  beginning. 

I  sit  at  home  and  drive  pegs  into  John  Morey's 
shoe. 

This  is  also  a  beginning. 

I  talk  with  John  Morey  and  discover  his  inmost 
mind,  what  he  thinks  regarding  many  matters,  re- 
ligious and  political.  Here  is  my  crusade,  well 
mapped  out;  sympathetic  and  intelligent  under- 
standing is  the  one  thing  needful.  I  tell  him  what 
I  think,  but  absent-mindedly;  I  find  it  harder  now 
to  be  interested  in  what  John  Morey  thinks  and  to 
help  shape  his  thought  to  fine  issues. 

In  these  vast  empty  spaces,  for  this  small  sea 
town  seems  to  me  now  an  immeasurable,  dreary 
waste,  I  keep  myself  hard  at  work.  Tim  is  unre- 
mitting in  his  devotion ;  he  understands,  as  does  no 
one  else  in  Mataquoit,  and  he  is  trying  to  make  of 
himself  not  only  a  four-footed  friend,  but  a  young 
girl  with  a  sensitive,  determined  face,  and  a  youth 
in  khaki,  with  merry,  affectionate  eyes  and  a  jolly 
laugh.  He  is  not  entirely  successful,  but  he  comes 
nearer  success  than  any  one  else  could. 

My  mind  persistently  strays  from  the  problems 
of  the  days  to  come  to  the  glory  of  these  present 
days.  It  is  in  the  faces  of  the  young,  and  not  of 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  255 

Jack  and  Katharine  alone,  that  I  find  an  answer  to 
the  haunting  question  as  to  whether  this  is  the  end- 
ing of  a  great  period;  whether  the  world  is  falling 
to  decay. 

There  can  be  no  serious  thought  of  resemblance 
between  the  character  of  our  time  and  that  of 
Rome's  downward  days,  a  parallel  that,  I  confess, 
has  often  occurred  to  me.  The  conscript  legions 
had  no  strength  for  life's  renewing  such  as  that 
offered  by  the  youth  of  to-day.  The  world  over  the 
young  have  flocked  to  give  all;  their  vigor,  hope, 
passion  go  into  the  collective  life  of  the  world.  It  is 
not  only  the  young  men ;  the  young  women  also  find 
constantly  new  ways  to  serve.  What  power  in  their 
continued  life,  if  this  be  granted,  for  life's  renewing; 
what  power  in  their  death ! 

With  their  millions,  the  world  over,  living  so 
greatly,  dying  so  greatly,  grasping  already  in  youth 
the  truth  that  comes  hardly  ever  in  later  years,  the 
essential  truth  that  deepest  living  is  deepest  sacri- 
fice, who  can  think  that  to-day  can  mean  downfall, 
decadence,  loss?  Rather,  there  is  immense  impul- 
sion, an  immense  gain,  this  world -experience  in  self- 
abnegation,  carrying  life  to  higher  levels  than  it  has 
ever  known  before.  It  may  be  that  under  the  great 
challenge  so  grandly  taken  by  youth,  the  race, 
through  its  very  struggle  and  anguish,  will  develop 
with  swiftness  never  known  before,  brief  months 
doing  the  work  of  many  hundred  years. 

Not  in  the  days  of  Rome's  decadence,  but  in  the 
day  of  her  power  when  the  great  attempt  at  world 
dominion  was  made,  I  find  a  certain  parallel.  The 
grasp  at  world  power  failed ;  but  down  all  the  broad 
highways  of  the  Caesars,  through  all  their  vast 


256  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

cities,  triumphed  a  faith  whose  way  they  had  un- 
wittingly made  straight,  prepared. 

As  to-day,  millions  of  the  young  flock,  eager  for 
the  sacrifice,  we  can  but  say:  What  fruit  has  come 
from  that  spectacle  of  the  pale  Christ  upon  the 
Cross! 

September  12. 

Day  by  day  I  feel  more  deeply  the  difference  in 
this,  our  America;  this  rising  to  the  call  of  the  war 
means,  for  the  great  majority  of  the  nation,  a  re- 
newal of  the  old  pledges  of  democracy.  There  is  in- 
creasingly, an  awakening  of  the  rich  out  of  their  old 
mood  of  feeling  the  world  a  grand  place  in  which  to 
disport  one's  self  in  special  privilege,  —  freedom  to 
do  as  one  likes  and  utmost  ability  to  do  it ;  there  is 
a  partial  rousing  of  the  laboring  class  from  a  self- 
centered  demand  for  their  rights,  yet  many  of  the 
unions  are  still  far  from  patriotism;  there  is  a 
splendid  response  of  the  great  middle  class  —  east, 
west,  north,  south  —  offering  brain,  and  muscle,  and 
possessions.  Professional  and  artist  classes  find 
common  hope  and  aim  with  plain  folk.  There  is 
continual  growth  of  all  through  this  stern  struggle 
into  a  sense  of  unity  of  this  vast  nation,  a  feeling  of 
oneness  in  a  great  hope.  It  is  not  a  narrow  race 
feeling,  but  union  of  a  conglomerate  people  in  a 
common  ideal,  fine,  high,  beyond  anything  this 
world  has  ever  known. 

It  comes,  the  deeper  concord  for  which  we  have 
longed. 

We  grow  toward  unselfishness,  toward  larger 
views,  toward  a  greater  conception  than  the  state- 
craft of  any  large  nation  has  ever  yet  recognized, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  257 

that  man  is  his  brother's  keeper.  The  promise  for 
the  world  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  young  are  learn- 
ing it. 

The  voluntary  service  offered  in  this  war  is  a  step, 
and  a  great  step,  in  a  mighty  progress.  That  which 
one  has  found  in  vision  as  the  hope  of  the  days  of 
peace  becomes  actual  in  this  new  disinterestedness  of 
war  time;  each  day  brings  record  of  fresh  activities 
that  seem  a  prophecy  of  fulfilment  of  my  aspirations 
for  the  civic  relations'  of  manhood.  All  classes  are 
suddenly  called  out  of  themselves  and  above  them- 
selves, and  so  the  world  moves  upward  to  fuller 
understanding,  fuller  sympathy,  which  holds  within 
it  the  promise  of  future  peace.  Those  who  have 
served  greatly  will  not  forget. 

September  20. 

I  am  a  proud  man  now  as  I  walk  the  streets  of 
Mataquoit,  for  Tim  is  wagging  friendliness  nearly 
all  the  time,  and,  as  Tim's  tail  registers  the  state 
of  my  feeling  more  accurately  than  I  can  register 
it  myself,  I  recognize  within  me  a  definite  growth  in 
the  matter  of  entering  into  the  lives  of  my  kind. 
It  is  Tim  who  keeps  me  constantly  aware  that  my 
interest,  my  concern  ramify  in  all  directions,  reveal- 
ing to  me  my  subconscious  self,  which  often  is  bet- 
ter than  I,  —  the  merely  thinking  I. 

Yet  my  understanding  of  men,  while  it  grows 
greater,  does  not  display  that  constant  and  orderly 
progress  which  I  had  hoped.  I  have  one  day  a  feel- 
ing that  I  have  gained  new  insight;  then  I  find 
myself  baffled,  with  an  overwhelming  sense  of  igno- 
rance of  how  to  go  about  my  task;  and  at  times  I 
search  even  for  my  longing  to  understand.  Possibly 


258  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

I  went  about  it  with  too  much  of  scientific  over- 
certainty  of  results  if  study  were  applied.  It  takes 
more  than  observation,  more  than  mere  intellectual 
questioning  to  understand  your  neighbor;  your 
whole  heart  and  mind  and  soul,  as  well  as  your 
attention,  must  be  set  on  it.  Personality  retreats 
before  you  into  fathomless  recesses ;  all  you  have  of 
individual  concern  and  of  affectionate  interest  must 
be  used  to  lure  it  from  its  hiding  place.  Old  Mrs. 
Mooney,  whose  deepest  nature  I  divine,  whose  in- 
nermost motive  I  know  on  Tuesday,  on  Wednesday 
has  become  an  impenetrable  mystery. 

A  battered  post  card  from  Jack,  a  brief  letter  from 
Katharine,  remind  me  that  my  endeavor  to  enter 
into  the  lives  of  my  kind  has  worked  out  hi  ways 
sweet  and  unexpected.  In  coming,  I  went  into  vol- 
untary isolation ;  I  broke  with  my  traditions,  cutting 
myself  off,  I  thought,  from  personal  ties.  And  now 
has  come  the  deepest  relationship  that  I  have  ever 
known.  It  is  ironic;  I  who  set  out  to  embrace  all 
human  kind,  find  human  kind  in  general  often  elud- 
ing me,  but  find  my  affection  going  out  unstintedly 
to  these  two,  and  bringing  great  reward. 

Perhaps  I  can  learn  to  love  my  neighbor  as  my- 
self: no  great  task,  —  but  I  can  not  love  him  as  I 
love  Jack  and  Katharine  Brown.  Especially  Jack. 

September  30. 

It  is  difficult  to  face  the  thought  of  the  rain  of 
fire  on  the  western  front,  not  only  because  of  fear 
of  danger  to  our  own  lads,  but  because  of  our  sorrow 
that  they  must  take  weapons  of  destruction  in  their 
hands.  God  grant  that  the  great  purpose  of  this 
fight  be  held  in  the  heart  of  each  American  boy  who 


A   WORLD   TO    MEND  259 

goes  into  it,  through  all  the  bitter  struggle.  He  who 
takes  up  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword  except 
it  be  to  him  less  a  weapon  than  a  symbol  of  the 
right.  This  warfare  must  not  be  mere  fighting; 
unless  we  keep  faith  with  our  higher  hope  that  this 
war  will  end  all  wars  and  usher  in  a  better  order  yet 
to  be,  we  are  but  murderers. 

Our  dilemma  is  a  strange  and  tragic  one:  war  in 
itself  must  be  condemned  as  savagery,  to  be  put  be- 
hind us  as  soon  as  may  be  in  the  striding  onward 
of  humanity.  But  the  momentous  crisis  proved 
that,  until  all  the  world  outgrow  it,  we  must  bear 
our  sad  part  therein;  the  fact  that  we  of  America 
had  long  outgrown  war  is  no  reason  for  shirking  our 
responsibility  of  helping  save  for  mankind  that  lib- 
erty which  we  have  won  for  ourselves.  Growth  is 
an  uneven  thing;  progress  is  an  uneven  thing,  yet 
the  marching  host  must  go  together ;  wo  cannot  leave 
behind  those  who  have  struggled  and  fallen  from  the 
line.  They  who  retard,  as  Germany  does  now,  re- 
tard the  whole ;  they  who  drag  down,  drag  down  the 
whole,  —  for  a  tune  only,  for  certain  months  and 
days. 

Thus  with  the  leaders  of  this  sorry  enterprise  we 
descend  into  hell.  Every  moment  of  this  warfare 
drives  home  the  profound  truth  that  man  is,  of 
necessity,  one  with  his  fellow ;  go  with  him  he  must, 
be  it  to  hell  or  to  heaven;  there  is  no  falling,  no 
rising  alone.  May  every  moment  drive  home  to 
every  man  the  truth  that  it  is  also  his  most  sacred 
duty  to  block  forever  the  gates  of  this  particular 
hell;  and  to  spend  his  utmost  energy  in  finding 
paths  whereby  he  and  his  fellow  man  may  mount 
in  harmony  heavenwards. 


260  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

November  15. 

Winter  comes  on  apace  with  windy  days  of  driven 
leaves  and  quiet  sunshiny  mornings  of  hoar  frost. 
Still  our  great  national  work  goes  on,  in  training  and 
equipping  soldiers ;  in  making  munitions ;  in  gather- 
ing and  distributing  supplies.  So  great  an  effort, 
so  swift  and  determined  a  girding-up  of  loins,  we 
have  never  made  in  all  our  history,  yet,  if  recent 
reports  be  true,  unabashed  luxury  still  shames  us. 
Men  surfeit  here,  while  thousands  starve  over  there. 
The  life  of  unthinking  plutocrats  in  our  large  cities, 
for  there  are  still  many,  with  their  sybaritic  quar- 
ters, their  rich  foods,  their  priceless  jewelry  and 
costly  clothing;  the  waste  of  resources,  such  as  the 
constant  glare  of  electricity  in  city  streets  in  foolish 
advertising,  while  London  and  Paris  sit  in  darkness 
in  order  to  economize  light,  betray  us,  or  many  of  us, 
as  something  less  than  citizens  of  this  our  America 
in  her  new,  finely  heroic  mood.  A  devoted  worker 
in  war  relief,  home  for  a  rest,  wrote  recently  that 
the  difference  was  so  great  between  those  stricken 
capitals  and  ours,  the  heartless  expenditure  here 
made  her  so  deeply  ashamed  of  her  country,  that 
she  longed  to  go  back  immediately  to  those  lands 
where  people  live  and  suffer,  away  from  this  spot 
where  people  feed  and  flaunt. 

There  is  another  side  here  which  she  will  see  in 
time ;  meanwhile,  we  need  to  suffer.  God  grant  that, 
through  the  suffering,  wisdom  may  come. 

This  thought,  intensified  by  the  crisis  of  the  mo- 
ment, of  needless  expenditure,  has  been  with  me 
much  during  the  past  months,  for  I  have  been  long 
on  the  track  of  a  vanishing  simplicity  in  our  life,  an 
earlier  reality  of  democratic  conditions,  disappearing 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  261 

now  under  the  impact  of  wealth,  with  display  on 
the  part  of  those  who  have,  and  envy  on  the  part  of 
those  who  lack.  There  was  in  days  gone  by,  in  many 
a  community,  a  something  finer  in  actuality  in  the 
relations  of  man  to  man  than  the  theoretic  schemes, 
the  machine  socialisms  of  to-day,  a  something  that 
we  need  to  rediscover  and  redevelop,  until  it  become 
manifest  throughout  the  land,  a  friendly  relation- 
ship in  difference  of  condition,  without  patronage  on 
the  one  hand  or  covetousness  on  the  other.  Men 
knew  better  in  old  days  how  little  material  things 
really  mattered ;  it  is  great  pity  to  have  the  thought 
of  mere  possessions  exalted  to  be  the  central  article 
of  any  social  and  political  creed. 

As  I  walk  by  frozen  meadow  or  the  shore  of  the 
loud-sounding  sea,  with  Tim  at  i£y  heels,  I  find 
myself  repeating  a  kind  of  litany: 

"From  increasing  luxury,  from  respect  for  mere 
things,  from  selfish  detachment,  from  neglect  of 
civic  duty,  from  failure  to  realize  individual  respon- 
sibility, from  selfish  claim,  Good  Lord,  deliver  us." 

Democracy's  prayer;  it  is  high  time  that  de- 
mocracy was  on  her  knees. 


XXX 

April  29,  1918. 

Found  my  ledger,  with  a  thick  coating  of  dust,  in 
a  drawer  where  it  had  long  lain  forgotten.  This  is 
no  pen-and-ink  world,  either  in  Mataquoit  or  on  the 
Western  Front.  I  grow  increasingly  practical ;  night 
after  night,  I  go  with  all  my  toil  so  weary  to  bed 
that  sleep  is  too  sound  for  dreams,  even  dreams  of 
progress. 

The  papers  recently  announced  that  our  consump- 
tion of  wheat  here  in  America  had  been  diminished 
by  fifty  per  cent,  owing  to  the  effort  made  by  the 
United  States  to  send  wheat  to  relieve  the  Allies, 
using  substitutes  at  home,  —  rye,  barley,  corn  meal. 
I  like  to  think  of  the  concrete  way  in  which  this 
has  brought  into  practically  every  American  home 
the  country  over  some  sense  of  responsibility  toward 
one's  brother  man.  The  effort  to  feed  the  hungry 
world  and  the  slight  self-denial  imposed  by  it  must 
be  enormously  educative  for  us  in  this  country,  all 
too  used  to  the  sight  of  the  grasping  hand  of  the 
master  of  industry,  of  labor  crying  for  more  and 
more,  of  venial  politician  working  in  the  interests 
of  his  small  group.  The  secret  of  the  real  brother- 
hood of  man  is  perhaps  contained  in  the  flour  barrel, 
broken  wide  open  for  all. 

One  munches  rye  bread  with  a  feeling  of  thankful- 
ness that  such  homely  ways  of  serving  one's  coun- 
try are  open  to  us  who  may  not  fight.  One  elimi- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  263 

nates  sugar,  but  what  is  sugar,  when  one's  spirit 
chafes  night  and  day  unceasingly  as  the  waves  fret 
the  shore,  with  baffled  longing  to  serve  in  action? 
My  brief  and  slangy  letters  from  Jack  show  me, 
though  I  have  to  read  between  the  lines,  that  he  is 
doing  a  man's  work  "over  there."  I  read  them  over 
many  times,  with  deep  content  and  with  a  subtle 
sense  of  assurance  difficult  to  put  into  words.  Dur- 
ing all  the  crash  and  turmoil  of  the  time,  the  thought 
of  Jack  brings  me  a  sudden  sense  of  peace,  as  if 
through  my  love  for  him  some  inner  law  of  harmony 
had  been  revealed;  these  are  moments  when  the 
stirring  of  this  which  is  nearest  the  divine  within 
me,  reveals  something  of  hidden  purpose  in  things, 
when  he  and  I,  and  all  men  seem  safe,  through  all 
the  tragedy  of  circumstance,  held  in  a  region  of  great 
music,  —  love. 

May  10. 

More  and  more  boots  come  to  be  mended,  and 
this  is  patriotism,  in  part  at  least;  people  who,  in 
earlier  days,  would  never  have  thought  of  wearing 
mended  boots  now  bring  footgear  of  all  kinds  for 
repair.  It  is  a  wise  economy,  personal,  national,  — 
nay,  for  all  the  world  needs  leather,  international; 
my  stitches  help  bind  the  broken  bits  of  the  world 
together;  my  waxed  thread  twines  itself  into  that 
web  that  life  is  weaving  throughout  the  world  of 
the  sorrows  and  the  suffering  of  mankind  and  the 
desire  to  help,  knitting  mankind  into  one.  Every 
mended  boot  helps  in  a  world  suffering  from  a 
leather  shortage. 

But  what  can  one  say  of  women  in  these  days, 
with  their  fur  coats  and  leather  coats  and  their  high 


264  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

boots,  demanding,  and  for  mere  fashion,  more 
leather  than  they  ever  asked  before?  Was  that 
literary  blasphemer  right  who  said  that  woman 
would  be  the  last  thing  to  be  civilized? 

May  12. 

We  linger  long  over  our  newspapers,  which  record 
activities  at  home,  and  news  from  the  battlefields 
where  the  destiny  of  mankind  is  being  decided. 
Reports  of  disaster  over  there  we  meet  with  rising 
courage ;  reports  of  success  with  the  hope  that,  when 
our  day  of  triumph  comes,  we  may  celebrate  not 
victory,  but  peace. 

The  list  of  casualties,  which  grows  longer  as  our 
share  in  the  war  becomes  a  more  active  one,  I  read 
with  sorrow  and  with  reverence,  hoping  that  those 
who  fell,  fell  willingly,  knowing  for  what  they 
fought.  For  those  who  understood,  and  cared,  I 
can  not  count  this  loss  of  life  loss;  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  living  your  whole  life  in  a  few  minutes,  if 
thereby  you  help  save  the  finer  hope  of  the  world. 
With  my  reverence  for  these  boys  who  have  won 
life's  supreme  gift  in  their  days  of  youth  is  min- 
gled envy,  envy  of  their  opportunity  and  of  their 
strength  to  use  it. 

I  am  anything  but  a  militarist ;  I  hate  war  and  its 
unspeakable  cruelty,  but  I  cannot  help  realizing,  as 
I  see  the  splendor  of  the  response  to  the  great  chal- 
lenge, how  little  in  recent  decades  that  which  is 
deepest  in  human  nature  has  been  made  manifest; 
how  the  profounder  resources  of  our  being  have 
remained  hidden  and  unknown.  Something  has 
come  to  the  surface  that  we  did  not  realize  was 
there;  I  am  aware  of  something  greater  and  bet- 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  265 

ter  in  our  country  and  in  the  life  of  the  majority 
of  its  citizens  than  was  apparent  in  the  fat  and 
prosperous  ante-bellum  days:  deeper  concern  for 
inner  values;  lessening  content  with  comfort  and 
mere  physical  well-being;  aspiration  toward  higher 
things  and  willingness  to  suffer  for  them ;  a  new  dis- 
interestedness, a  desire  to  lose  name  and  face  in 
the  sum  total  of  human  welfare.  The  eyes  of  men 
are  being  lit  from  some  farther  star. 

How  far  we  were  from  measuring  up  to  the  chal- 
lenge when  the  first  shock  came ;  how  we  have  grown 
in  strength  and  in  impersonality  since  that  first 
sense  of  quivering  horror;  what  possibilities  of  de- 
votion in  human  spirit  have  been  revealed,  I  would 
my  ledger  might  record  truthfully. 

It  brings  us  close  to  that  enduring  mystery,  the 
ministry  of  pain  in  our  lives.  There  is  no  use  of 
putting  down  words;  it  is  too  deep  to  fathom,  yet 
one's  thought  reaches  out  to  days  when,  in  peace 
also,  the  soul  of  our  country  will  be  awakened  and 
alert,  no  longer  "Fit  but  to  be  led  by  pain." 

May  25. 

Billions  Brown  is  here  again ;  we  approached  each 
other  to-day  each  with  a  white  flag;  the  last  time 
we  talked  we  were  at  such  odds  about  Katharine 
that  we  parted  not  wholly  friends. 

His  white  flag  was  very  white  indeed;  I  admired 
him  as  he  unfurled  it  and  held  it  resolutely  aloft. 
He  gave  me  news  of  Katharine;  she  was  working 
very  hard,  possibly  to  the  detriment  of  her  health; 
though  Billions  poohed  and  pshawed  over  the  folly 
of  it  I  could  see  that  he  was  glowing  with  such  pride 
as  never  possessed  him  before.  Katharine  writes  to 


266  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

him  faithfully  every  week,  though  the  letters  were 
often  long  delayed. 

He  told  me,  a  bit  sheepishly,  but  with  a  twinkle 
in  his  gloomy  eyes,  that  I  need  not  plan  further  to 
share  my  two  dollars  and  forty-seven  cents  a  week 
with  Katharine;  he  had  decided  some  time  ago  to 
give  her  back  her  allownace,  with  additions. 

"What  could  I  do,  with  you  and  Katharine  and 
Mother  all  against  me?"  he  asked. 

"Don't  forget  Clare,"  I  suggested.  It  was  Clare 
who  told  me  later  this  afternoon  the  amount  of  this 
allowance;  Billions,  who  has  scoffed  at  all  war 
charities,  is  sending  his  daughter  monthly  an  enor- 
mous sum  to  use  for  herself  or  for  anybody  who 
needs  it.  It  is  enough  to  make  an  appreciable  dif- 
ference in  the  wretchedness  of  some  sections  of 
northern  France. 

In  talking  with  Billions  I  spoke  casually  of  the 
fact  that  our  consumption  of  wheat  had  now  de- 
creased sixty-five  per  cent;  he  broke  into  angry 
speech.  The  government  had  no  right  to  interfere 
with  individual  liberty  in  this  way ;  he  had  asserted 
his  independence  as  a  citizen  of  the  United  States 
by  storing  a  great  hoard  of  flour;  the  government 
had  confiscated  it.  His  wrath  at  the  memory  of  this 
shook  the  frail  walls  of  my  little  shop.  Then  he 
told  me,  with  a  loud  laugh,  of  his  chef,  who,  one  day 
in  April,  came  raging  into  Billions'  library  with  a 
bag  of  corn  meal  in  one  hand,  of  rye  flour  in  the 
other,  and  asked, 

"What  do  you  want  me  to  do  with  this  peeg 
food?" 

"Let  it  rot,"  said  Billions.    And  the  chef  obeyed. 

Here  Billions  and  I  took  to  the  trenches  again 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  267 

and  carried  on  a  war  of  words,  going  valiantly  over 
the  top  more  than  once.  Who  is  victor  is  often  hard 
to  say  in  this  trench  warfare,  but  I  naturally  thought 
it  was  I.  Have  I  not  right  on  my  side? 

June  9. 

The  solemn  summer  days  move  on,  from  their 
dawning  over  the  gray  sea  to  their  ending  in  the 
green  west,  where  the  sun  goes  down  behind  the 
pines.  All  through  the  anguish  of  this  struggle,  man 
against  man,  all  through  this  new  and  deeper 
brotherhood,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  profound  suf- 
fering, I  hear  the  voice  of  the  coming  era,  singing 
great  promises  for  the  future. 

There  is  an  awful  simplicity  in  this  moment ;  the 
things  that  matter  are  few  and  very  great.  Right 
seems  more  right  than  it  used  to,  and  wrong  more 
wrong,  for  the  relationship  of  man  to  man  is  re- 
vealed as  unfathomably  deep,  deeper  than  we  knew. 
How  far  away  and  unthinkable  are  those  old  mo- 
ments of  amusement  at  the  peculiarities  of  human 
beings,  that  interest  in  life  as  a  spectacle!  How 
far  that  cool  analysis  of  idiosyncrasies,  failings,  that 
detached  character  study  in  which  we  used  to  de- 
light, that  world  of  which  Henry  James  was  the 
admired  interpreter. 

My  neighbor's  failing  is  now,  in  some  deep  sense, 
my  own ;  we  have  joined  hands  with  humanity ;  we 
are  part  and  parcel  with  those  whose  lives  we  share. 
We  can  no  longer  stand  aside  and  merely  study  our 
fellow  men;  if  they  have  failings  they  must  needs 
make  good,  and  we  must  share  the  making;  we  are 
one  with  our  fellows  in  this  awful  hour,  and,  please 
God,  hereafter.  Clever  or  not,  gifted  or  not,  stupid, 


268  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

brave,  or  full  of  fear,  they  are  our  brothers.  Noth- 
ing seems  to  matter  save  that  we  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  trying  to  keep  the  line;  save  that  we  all 
remember  that  we  fight  for  humanity.  What  great 
foreshadowing  we  now  discern,  through  deepened 
sense  of  kinship,  of  a  greater  nation  yet  to  be ! 

June  25. 

Billions  drives  about  Mataquoit,  or  strolls  over 
his  vast  estate  with  a  more  and  more  puzzled  look 
upon  his  face.  Such  an  expression  have  I  seen  on  the 
face  of  a  boy  whose  kite  has  vanished  in  a  high  wind, 
and  who  stands  gazing  at  the  string.  Billions'  world 
has  blown  clear  away,  and  he  still  clutches  vainly 
the  broken  string. 

He  joins  now  and  then  the  symposiums  in  my 
shop,  where,  even  in  June,  we  have  an  open  fire  if 
the  evening  is  chilly,  symposiums  where  we  try  to 
rebuild  the  world.  He  often  looks  puzzled.  This 
framing  of  a  perfect  world  is  indeed  a  task ;  even  the 
Creator  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  that,  when  you 
come  to  think  of  it. 

All  over  the  country,  from  Florida  to  Oregon, 
the  patriotic  movement  toward  greater  production 
is  on;  from  sea  to  sea,  the  embattled  farmers,  with 
their  embattled  daughters,  dig,  hoe,  and  rake,  try- 
ing to  meet  with  peas,  beans,  potatoes  and  a  hundred 
other  growing  things  the  threatened  famine  of  the 
world. 

Billions'  younger  daughter,  Clare,  is  out  in  one 
of  the  fields  on  his  estate,  hoeing,  in  khaki  trousers. 
She,  whose  mother  never  touched  anything  rougher 
than  finest  lawn  or  softest  velvet,  never  lifted  a 
finger  to  perform  the  slightest  useful  task,  is  working 


A    WOULD    TO    MEND  269 

like  a  farmer's  son  from  early  morning  until  late 
afternoon.  The  young  truly  have  seen  a  vision. 

Billions,  who  disapproves,  who  forbade  her,  un- 
availingly,  to  do  this,  stands  often  by  the  fence,  in 
his  uncomfortable  elegance  of  attire,  looking  on 
and  scowling.  But  I  know  that,  even  if  he  has  not 
wakened  to  the  need  of  the  hour,  the  old  free  days 
of  his  boyhood  are  astir  in  him;  I  know  that  he 
envies  Clare  that  khaki  suit. 

As  I  passed  this  afternoon,  Clare  looked  up  and 
grinned  at  me,  but  she  did  not  stop  her  work:  I 
ought  to  add  that  I  think  she  winked.  The  world 
is  hungry ;  the  young  heiress  hoes  corn ;  throughout 
the  country  maidens  and  young  boys  are  raising  a 
fairer  crop  than  they  know. 

July  4. 

On  this  day  which  is  being  celebrated  the  world 
over  as  commemorating  a  definite  step  outward  and 
upward  in  the  history  of  the  human  race,  a  radical 
journal,  whose  title  claims  prophecy  for  the  future, 
whose  motto  claims  Christianity,  has  been  put  into 
my  hands.  Its  weak  violence  dismays  me ;  it  attacks 
our  government,  our  institutions,  at  every  point ;  it 
builds  up  nowhere.  It  is  but  one  of  many  publica- 
tions of  the  kind  throughout  the  country,  produced 
and  supported  not  only  by  aliens,  but  by  descend- 
ants of  American  citizens,  who  thus  dishonor  their 
forbears. 

The  consciences  of  free  men  should  forbid  such 
snarling  utterances ;  the  weak  cry  out  and  denounce 
because  they  are  weak;  the  strong  lend  a  hand. 
Any  man  who  sets  his  face  toward  the  smallest  task 
of  construction  I  honor,  minute  though  it  may  be, 


270  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

but  my  heart  is  too  sore  with  the  world's  great  agony 
to  bear  with  patience  this  petty  carping,  coming 
like  stings  upon  an  open  wound. 

I  have  no  defense  to  make  of  many  aspects  of 
the  present  state  of  things  here  in  America;  there 
has  been  great  abuse  of  individual  opportunity ;  our 
government  has  not  at  all  points  shown  either  omnis- 
cience or  omnipotence,  such  as  is  claimed  for  the 
paper  schemes  outlined  by  the  ultra  radicals  of  to- 
day. But  to  declare  a  government  wholly  bad  be- 
cause of  grave  sins  and  shortcomings  is  to  deny  the 
possibility  of  government  among  men,  for  as  long 
as  men  fall  short  of  perfection,  governments  will 
fall  short  of  perfection.  I  have  not,  if  I  dare  sug- 
gest it,  noted  among  the  anarchists  and  extreme 
radicals  that  passion  for  perfection  of  character 
which  alone  could  ensure  permanent  success  for  their 
plans  of  rule,  and  I  find  difficulty  in  sharing  their 
belief  in  the  adequacy  of  that  rule,  as  an  ultimate 
solution  of  the  human  problem. 

The  gist  of  my  thought  about  the  matter  is  that 
it  is  for  the  real  sons  and  daughters  of  America  to 
admit  the  existence  of  present  abuses  and  to  find 
a  way  of  righting  them.  Our  past  experience  in 
freedom  ought  to  have  brought  us  to  a  point  where 
we  can  get  on  without  red  revolution;  we  shall  do 
better  in  evolution  than  in  revolution ;  and  after  all, 
evolution  seems  to  be  nature's  way. 

July  10. 

It  would  make  the  asset  side  of  my  ledger  far 
too  long  to  record  there  all  that  has  been  done  in 
Mataquoit  in  behalf  of  a  suffering  world.  The 
bean  vines  of  Joe  Hincks  bear  testimony  to  a  new 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  271 

sense  of  international  relations,  as  do  the  cabbages 
of  Enoch  Ames,  the  truckman,  and  the  patriotic 
potatoes  of  the  Widow  Frayne,  for  even  she  has 
felt  the  breath  of  a  new  era  astir  in  her  garden 
patch.  Old  Madame  Strong  on  the  hill  has  risen 
to  heights  of  patriotism;  her  wakened  spirit  took 
the  form  of  summer  squashes.  She  could  not  work 
herself,  but  she  dispensed  with  the  services  of  her 
maid  that  the  latter  might  make  a  garden.  Clare,  un- 
abashed, is  peddling  from  town  to  town,  in  a  rickety 
Ford  belonging  to  a  girl  of  her  acquaintance,  the 
peas  and  lettuce  and  other  vegetables  that  she  has 
raised.  To  Billions'  insistent  offers  of  unlimited 
funds  for  contribution  she  replies  by  a  firm  smile,  — 
her  grandmother's  smile;  she  wants  to  earn  some- 
thing. Her  short  khaki  skirt  and  high  tan  boots, 
both  somewhat  dusty,  her  brown,  resolute,  winsome 
face  under  a  flapping  straw  hat  bring  great  pleasure 
to  Tim  and  me,  but  anguish  to  Billions.  I  am  sorry 
for  him  but  cannot  help;  these  birth  throes  of  a 
greater  world  must  be  endured. 

The  Red  Cross  rooms  are  piled  high  with  gar- 
ments and  with  bandages;  sweaters  and  socks  in- 
numerable are  being  knit  by  the  women  of  the 
town;  even  old  Nicholas  Means,  a  retired  sea  cap- 
tain, has  knit  two  pairs  of  socks  for  the  soldiers. 
Why  could  he  do  nothing  in  times  of  peace  except 
fuddle  himself  with  something  that  intoxicates? 
What  it  was  I  can  not  say ;  this  is  the  State  of  Maine. 

Old  lady  Simms  has  actually  made  and  contrib- 
uted half  a  dozen  shirts,  all  stitched  by  hand:  how 
she  saved  money  to  purchase  the  material  for  them 
nobody  knows.  Even  old  Joshua  Ridgeway,  though 
he  has  not  raised  vegetables  for  his  fellows  or  knit 


272  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

socks,  has  placed  two  considerable  sums  of  money 
in  my  hands  for  Red  Cross  use.  Where  have  his 
patriotism,  his  humanity,  been  summering  all  these 
years?  And  Wallace,  —  but  no  ledger  could  sum 
up  all  that  Wallace  has  done  and  is  doing. 

People  rush  at  this  crisis  to  give  of  their  sub- 
stance, their  time,  their  strength.  So  many  are  the 
national  generosities  that  I  am  beginning  to  realize 
that  our  engrossment  with  material  things  was  not 
so  real  as  it  seemed.  The  great  majority  were  doubt- 
less absorbed  in  these  things  because  they  saw 
nothing  better ;  it  was  but  a  thin  surface  crust,  this 
absorption,  concealing  depths  which  no  man  knew. 


XXXI 

July  15. 

Letters  from  Jack  and  Katharine  come  at  rare 
intervals,  lending  a  glory  to  my  baked  beans,  suf- 
fusing fish  cakes  with  a  radiance  not  their  own, 
lingering  with  a  kind  of  light  round  every  bit  of 
leather  in  my  shop.  Not  that  they  say  anything 
extraordinary;  they  are  severely  brief,  business-like, 
and  practical.  Jack  tells  me  about  his  dugout; 
about  going  over  the  top  and  coming  back  un- 
scathed; and  adds  that  the  tutoring  I  gave  him  in 
cobbling  has  stood  him  in  good  stead,  as  he  has 
mended  his  own  boots  more  than  once.  Katharine 
writes  about  the  hospital  beds,  with  mattresses  not 
as  comfortable  as  she  could  wish  suffering  men  to 
have;  about  the  endless  stream  of  wounded;  about 
endless  operations,  with  constant  anaesthetizing. 
This  giving  of  anaesthetics  is  her  chief  work. 
Though  both  economize  words,  they  give  me  some 
glimpses  of  life  over  there,  of  our  boys  marching 
through  French  villages  and  along  French  highways, 
under  overhanging  trees ;  of  children  running  out  to 
see  and  cheering  the  long  lines  of  American  sol- 
diers; of  gray-haired  men  and  women  at  cottage 
doors  watching  through  dim  eyes  the  hosts  of  their 
deliverers. 

There  is  not  a  word  in  the  letters  of  either  about 
their  feelings,  scarcely  a  word  about  themselves, 


274  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

except  as  a  pair  of  eyes  seeing  things,  a  pair  of  hands 
doing  things.  I  have  been  wont  to  deplore  the 
lack  of  vocabulary  of  the  young  of  the  present  day ; 
they  seem  to  have  at  their  command  a  single  ad- 
jective, a  phrase  or  two  at  best;  perhaps,  after  all, 
it  is  a  good  thing;  their  inarticulateness  may  be 
the  measure  of  their  practical  preoccupation  with 
the  matter  in  hand. 

Jack  is  threatening  to  send  home  a  little  French 
orphan,  a  lad  he  found  in  an  abandoned,  ruined 
village,  for  his  parents  to  look  after.  I  do  not  feel 
sure  that  this  would  do;  better  send  him  to  Tim 
and  me,  for  we  are  beginning  to  understand  the 
right  way  to  make  a  citizen  of  him  and  other  lads. 

Not  only  in  reading  letters  from  those  whose 
friendship  I  hold,  but  in  reading  newspaper  ac- 
counts of  the  deeds  of  youth  of  my  own  and  other 
countries  my  heart  swells  in  pride.  Such  glory  of 
human  courage  and  devotion  must  make  our  earth 
shine  out  as  more  than  a  star  among  stars. 

In  the  actual  sense  of  human  brotherhood,  —  not 
as  a  theory,  a  phrase,  but  a  loyal  companionship 
in  life  and  in  death;  in  the  generous  impersonality 
shown  in  this  war;  in  its  vast  sacrifice,  there  is 
foundation  and  firm  foundation  for  such  a  civiliza- 
tion as  the  world  has  never  seen,  a  something  for 
which  a  better  word  than  mere  inadequate  "civiliza- 
tion" must  be  discovered.  Men  do  not  seek  glory 
in  this  war,  do  not  ask  rewards,  do  not  try  to  attain 
individual  distinction.  In  this  very  subordination 
of  the  personal  demand,  its  annihilation,  is  a  basis 
for  an  uplifted  world-wide  democracy  where  every 
man's  concern  shall  be  res  publica. 

No  defeat  on  western  front  or  Italian  front,  no 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  275 

defection  in  Russia  can  hinder  its  coming  to  pass. 
For  the  eyes  of  men  have  seen  it  in  vision,  and  the 
future  is  secure;  it  is  builded  on  the  souls  of  men, 
and  the  souls  of  men  who  hope  like  this  can  not 
be  overthrown;  it  is  builded  on  the  one  lasting 
foundation,  sacrifice.  So  Christianity,  the  individ- 
ual faith,  slips  into  democracy,  a  creed  becoming 
manifest  in  the  rule  of  nations;  it  is  a  wonderful 
thing,  at  my  age,  to  feel  this  great  thing  begin  to 
come  to  pass. 

July  23. 

Spent  the  latter  part  of  the  afternoon  hoeing  my 
bean  patch,  for  I  also  am  a  patriot.  Candor  com- 
pels me  to  confess  that  my  beans  are  not  particu- 
larly good  beans;  the  vines  are  not  half  as  high  as 
those  of  Joe  Hincks,  my  policeman  friend.  But, 
excelsior ! 

The  best  thing  about  my  garden  patch  is  that  it 
now  and  then  raises  an  idea,  not  necessarily  my 
own.  With  cunning  forethought  I  chose  a  spot  not 
far  from  the  highway,  where  my  neighbors  pass  up 
and  down.  On  that  bit  of  fence,  picket  though  it 
be,  have  leaned  the  brains  and  brawn  of  Mataquoit, 
as  neighbor  after  neighbor  has  there  stopped  to  dis- 
cuss the  world  war,  and  the  world  future,  and  the 
weather.  Topics  of  international  importance  have 
been  turned  over  there  with  my  hoe;  topics  of 
local  importance  have  here  come  up  not  only  for 
discussion  but  for  settlement.  Was  I  not  recently 
made  a  selectman  of  Mataquoit? 

Wallace  stopped  for  a  few  minutes  to  discuss 
ways  and  means  of  increasing  our  Red  Cross  fund; 
he  looks  thinner,  older  than  when  I  first  saw  him; 


276  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  war  is  telling  on  this  man  who  suffers  in  other 
people's  suffering  as  he  does  not  in  his  own. 

After  he  went,  old  Mrs.  Martin  came  hurrying 
along,  with  terror  quivering  in  the  ancient  feathers 
of  her  rusty  bonnet.  A  report  had  reached  her  of 
German  submarines  off  the  coast  of  Cape  Cod  and 
of  vessels  sunk  there;  what  could  we  do  in  case  of 
attack?  Perhaps  it  is  but  natural  that  this  obscure 
town  on  the  Maine  coast  should  seem  to  its  inhabi- 
tants the  goal  of  the  Kaiser's  ambition ;  I  suggested 
all  that  I  could  in  the  way  of  comfort:  that  Mata- 
quoit  could  not  be  sunk  by  torpedo;  that  a  small 
party  of  German  soldiers  would  hardly  land  in  the 
midst  of  a  large  hostile  population.  She  refused  to 
be  reassured,  but  hurried  on,  reminding  me  that  I 
should  be  peculiarly  exposed  in  my  hut  so  near  the 
sea.  I  admitted  it. 

In  this  garden,  given  over  not  only  to  vegetables 
but  to  ideas,  the  ideas  are,  on  the  whole,  better 
than  the  vegetables.  If  my  patriotic  crop  is  a  bit 
different  from  those  of  my  neighbors,  I  trust  that  it 
brings  as  great  a  promise  of  sustenance  and  of  seed 
for  the  future.  Here,  with  the  help  of  two  of  my 
young  fellow  townsmen,  who  are  disaffected  in  the 
matter  of  wage,  I  have  raised  a  commendable  profit- 
sharing  scheme,  to  be  applied  in  all  industries  for 
the  contentment  of  the  laboring  man;  to  be  en- 
forced by  the  Federal  Government  through  an  inter- 
state commission  if  necessary.  Our  only  point  of 
difference  is  that  it  shall  be  everywhere  a  profit- 
and-loss  sharing  scheme;  this  idea  that  a  rule  can 
and  should  work  two  ways  perplexes  my  young 
friends,  who  scowl  and  shake  their  heads  over  it. 
being  obsessed  by  the  single  vision  of  their  kind  of 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  277 

a  rosy  future  with  high  mounting  wages,  and  no 
risks,  no  uncertainties  for  them.  We  have  talked 
much,  too,  of  the  possibility  of  breaking  up  our 
present  political  parties,  whose  differentiation  has 
now  become  more  a  matter  of  prejudice  than  of 
principle,  so  that  one  finds  oneself  in  an  embarrass- 
ing predicament  when  asked  by  a  foreigner  to  ex- 
plain the  essential  differences  between  a  Democrat 
and  a  Republican.  Our  presidential  campaigns  are 
marked  by  more  and  more  hasty  improvisation  of 
points  at  issue,  and  become  more  and  more  a  fight 
between  men  than  a  struggle  between  contrasting 
articles  of  political  faith.  If  we  could  but  have  a 
Conservative  party,  whose  chief  concern  should- be 
to  see  that  that  which  is  best  in  our  present  insti- 
tutions should  be  preserved,  and  a  Liberal  party 
whose  chief  concern  should  be  to  advocate  changes 
in  our  theory  and  practice  of  government,  that 
might  make  for  betterment;  we  might  perhaps  find 
out  the  path  of  wisdom  wherein  the  nation  could 
walk  in  safety  and  in  honor.  Fighting  under  the 
radical  wing  of  the  Liberal  party,  labor,  and  all 
modern  theorists  could,  in  endless  speech-making, 
blow  off  steam  which  now,  in  confinement,  tends 
toward  explosion. 

In  my  leisurely  hoeing  and  raking,  many  a  paral- 
lel suggests  itself  between  gardens  and  government. 
When  old  Joshua  Ridgway  speaks  of  our  Constitu- 
tion as  a  something  fixed  once  and  forever,  and 
never  to  be  altered;  when  the  radical  young  clerk 
in  Rankin's  drug  store  alludes  to  it  as  a  set  of  dead 
formulae,  ready  to  be  thrown  away,  it  is  my  privilege 
to  respond  that  our  Constitution  is  alive  and  capable 
of  endless  growth,  through  amendment,  so  that  it 


278  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

may  shape  itself  to  the  widening  destiny  of  a  grow- 
ing people.  It  is  difficult  to  convince  old  Joshua 
that  the  deepest  sacredness  of  this  charter  of  our 
liberties  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  can  be  changed  to 
meet  new  need,  as  it  is  to  convince  my  young  friend, 
the  clerk,  that  our  government  is  still  in  the  making. 
Digging  about  the  roots  of  my  corn,  I  confess  to 
myself  and  to  the  rustling  leaves  that  if  I  and  my 
fellows  had  shown  ourselves  aware  of  the  vital 
greatness  of  our  Constitution,  if  we  had  been  con- 
scious of  our  government  as  a  living  something,  to 
which  we,  as  citizens,  organic  factors,  contributed, 
there  would  be  among  us  fewer  disaffected  young 
radical  men  without  a  country.  Billions  Brown, 
Asa  Trimmer,  our  successful  lawyer,  Fred  Stone, 
our  real  estate  magnate,  and  I,  with  many  others,  — 
through  what  sense  of  higher  values,  through  what 
efforts  of  will  have  we  tried  to  make  good  the  pos- 
sibilities of  development  inherent  in  our  present 
scheme  of  rule?  Have  we  not  rather,  forgetting 
that  nature  never  pauses,  conceived  our  govern- 
ment as  a  something  settled  once  and  forever,  put 
about  us  as  a  protecting  wall  to  safeguard  us  and 
our  interests,  a  something  to  complain  about,  to 
criticize  with  amused  smiles?  That  it  is  an  organic 
body,  with  roots  deep  down  in  our  natures,  for 
whose  well  being  and  growth  we  are  individually 
responsible,  has  never  occurred  to  most  of  us. 

August  5. 

The  fourth  year  of  the  war  draws  to  its  close,  and 
the  horror  moves  on,  through  the  tragic  steps  of 
the  great  spring  drive  and  a  fresh  Armenian 
massacre,  ten  thousand  added  to  the  two  millions 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  279 

already  slain  and  starved;  through  continued 
struggle  on  the  western  front,  and  recent  success 
that  may  or  may  not  mean  permanent  gain.  Was 
Jack  in  this  last  advance,  I  wonder?  I  wait  anxiously 
to  know.  The  long  war  tension  deepens,  to  a  point 
where  it  is  well-nigh  unendurable.  How  can  one 
think  in  a  world  like  this;  how  write;  how  speak? 
All  forms  of  writing  break  under  the  strain;  all 
words  become  as  if  silent,  non-existent,  before  this 
awful  coming  into  human  life  of  that  which  makes 
every  hill  a  Calvary,  and  every  field  a  Holy  Sep- 
ulchre where  those  have  been  laid  who  have  died 
that  the  world  might  go  free. 

How  shall  words  that  sufficed  before  August, 
1914,  meet  our  need  now? 

The  soldiers,  they  tell  us,  are  silent,  after  the 
noise  and  crash  and  hell  of  sound.  Those  who  write 
of  the  look  of  men  who  have  fought  in  this  war 
speak  in  terms  that  recall  Browning's  Lazarus. 
They  seem  to  be  describing  men  who  have  been 
through  some  vast  and  terrible  experience  that  lan- 
guage cannot  reach ;  men  who  no  longer  live  in  this 
world,  but  judge  by  other  standards  than  ours,  have 
other  measures  of  life  and  action.,  We  who  do  not 
share,  who  live  in  safety  on  the  far  edge,  watching 
from  a  distance  Golgotha,  what  right  have  we  to 
speak?  Or,  for  that  matter,  live,  when  others  die 
that  we  may? 

What  this  means  to  the  sons  of  America  we  know 
in  part  from  their  suffering  and  their  glory,  shown 
in  their  flight  into  the  air,  their  courage  under 
water,  and  their  brave  graves  in  France.  The  letters 
from  young  soldiers  printed  from  time  to  time  in 
the  papers  make  one  hold  one's  breath  because  of 


280  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  simplicity  of  the  courage  expressed,  the  sure- 
ness  of  its  aim:  "If  I  go  out,  know  that  I  was 
game,"  is  the  burden  of  many  a  mesage.  These 
letters  seem  utterly  different  from  anything  of 
which  the  young  would  have1  been  capable  five  years 
ago,  in  this  thought  of  death,  not  as  a  something 
terrible,  far-off,  to  be  dreaded  through  a  cautious 
lifetime,  but  as  something  near,  perhaps  the  next 
step  of  achievement. 

There  is  in  the  letters  no  demand  except  for  a 
bit  of  chocolate  or  tobacco,  some  trivial  thing  whose 
sending  will  bring  pleasure  to  the  giver.  Is  this 
the  world  which,  of  late  years,  has  had  its  mind  and 
soul  concentrated  on  the  thought  of  comfort  and  of 
health  at  any  cost?  From  the  guarded,  self- 
centered,  germ-searching  rays  of  a  few  years  ago 
they  go  out  into  this  hell,  unflinching  in  the  face 
of  physical  annihilation  such  as  the  world  has  never 
seen.  And  their  bodies,  which  they  have  been 
taught  to  regard  as  all,  are  as  nothing;  the  faith 
for  which  they  die,  or,  worse,  suffer  mutilation,  is 
all. 

The  soul,  evidently,  has  survived  even  this 
modern  era,  with  its  obsession  regarding  the  world 
of  matter,  its  disintegrating  analysis,  its  lack  of 
vision. 

Reports  from  American  hospitals  in  France,  as 
from  other  hospitals,  record  no  murmurings  or  com- 
plaints, no  protest  against  mutilation,  suffering,  on- 
coming death,  only,  some  immense  unexpressed 
desire  to  help,  to  offer  all  in  the  great  cause.  Sol- 
diers and  civilians  alike  in  France,  England,  Italy 
suffer  utmost  hardship,  know  hunger,  deprivation, 
sorrow,  saying  only:  "I  am  content." 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  281 

Thinking  of  the  way  of  ancient  faiths,  with  their 
sacrifice  of  chosen  victims,  one  holds  one's  breath  to 
see  whole  nations  move  up  the  Via  Sacra,  the  Via 
Dolorosa,  to  sacrifice  themselves.  Fighting  Aus- 
tralian, Englishman,  Canadian,  American  go  out, 
in  supreme  surrender,  million  by  million,  risking  all, 
for  what?  That  all  men  may  have  a  chance,  may  go 
free,  as  they  are  free.  Swearing,  sinning  doubtless, 
forgetting  often  the  highest  part  of  the  high  aim, 
they  still  are  moved  by  some  immense  inner  force, 
they  give  in  willingness  all  for  something  which 
means  for  them  no  outer  gain,  only  utter  loss,  of 
things  external. 

Can  it  be  that  the  very  soul  of  Christian  faith 
has  made  undreamed  advance,  creeping  into  the 
hearts  of  believers  and  unbelievers  the  world  over, 
conquering  the  world  without  our  knowing  it,  as 
we  have  in  the  past  delicately  weighed  and  balanced 
doctrine,  assertion,  intellectual  question?  He  who 
dies,  dies  now  on  Calvary,  Christian  to  the  great 
heart  of  him,  whatever  may  be  on  his  lips.  Scoffer 
and  believer  march  in  step  to  willing  sacrificial 
death.  Have  doubter,  denier,  the  unthinking  found, 
while  the  Christian  world  was  troubling  itself  over 
theologies,  the  one  simple  and  sufficient  truth  that 
Christianity  is  a  life,  not  a  theory,  a  life,  perhaps 
death,  for  others?  Christ  knew  always. 

Through  the  shock  and  the  horror  of  resurgent 
paganism,  through  all  the  mist,  this  great  fact  of 
all  but  universal,  glad  sacrifice  shines  out.  Perhaps 
the  great  challenge  has  come  to  make  the  world 
aware  how  greatly  it  had  become  Christian,  not 
knowing;  Christian,  with  denial  on  its  lips,  but  love 
in  its  heart,  and  willing  surrender  of  life  for  it.  The 


282  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

world  insisted  upon  interpreting  Christianity  as  an 
absolute  philosophy  or  creed;  itself  its  own  witness, 
it  has  made  itself  manifest  as  inner  vitality,  men 
not  knowing.  We  are  digging  deep  these  days,  be- 
low our  doubts,  below  our  new-found  superficial 
knowledge,  into  the  deep,  rich,  hidden  vein  of  very 
life. 

August  10. 

List  upon  list  of  those  dead  and  wounded;  loss 
upon  loss;  it  often  seems  too  much  to  bear.  It  is 
as  if  life  were  just  bringing  us  forth ;  as  if  we  were 
being  born,  through  pain  and  suffering  and  awful 
horror,  in  the  travail  of  some  mighty  mother;  and 
all  our  past,  with  its  loves  and  its  aspiration  and  its 
achievements,  is  lost  in  wonder  as  to  whether  we 
shall  be  worth  her  anguish.  Our  eyes  are  strained  in 
trying  to  read  the  mighty  purpose  on  her  forehead ; 
her  eyes  we  cannot  see,  for  they  are  closed  and 
blind  with  pain. 

Will  they  unclose  and  reveal  some  undreamed 
beauty,  of  high  faith  and  piercing  insight,  —  aim, 
great  as  the  suffering  endured;  hope  equal  to  the 
agony;  joy,  deep  as  only  the  joy  can  be  that  has 
known  anguish,  —  that  deepest  joy  of  all,  of  bring- 
ing life  to  birth? 

The  past  seems  unimportant ;  shall  we  who  share 
life's  most  awful  hour  remember  aught  of  what  we 
did  or  what  we  were?  Only,  strain  every  nerve  and 
fiber;  try  to  let  every  feeling  quicken,  and  to  face 
every  slightest  flame  of  mental  energy,  that  we  may 
perhaps  somewhat  understand,  it  may  be  even  act, 
do  something  of  the  high  behest  of  earth's  most 
crucial  moment. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  283 

Our  failures  matter  as  little  as  our  small  achieve- 
ments; all  hopes  and  aims  held  heretofore,  whether 
gained  or  lost,  are  small  and  trivial  as  compared 
with  the  great  needs  of  this  moment.  If  we  have 
failed  and  it  is  ebb  tide  of  aspiration  and  endeavor 
with  us,  this  moment  may  be  the  turning  point ;  we 
may  come  on  again  with  swelling  intensity  of  pur- 
pose to  a  new  and  farther  mark  on  the  shore.  Per- 
haps all  life,  all  achievement,  all  civilization  is  even 
now  thus  falling,  falling,  to  rise  higher  than  ever 
before.  It  is  the  stress  of  great  storm  with  us  now ; 
will  high  tide,  and  clear  weather,  and  free  winds 
come? 


XXXII 

August  14. 

I  see  Jack's  father  and  mother  now  and  then; 
last  week  they  showed  me  a  German  helmet  which 
their  son  had  sent.  For  those  who  disapprove  of 
fighting  they  take  great  pride  in  one  boy's  valor 
in  fight;  they  go  over  again  and  again  all  the  de- 
tails he  has  given  in  his  letters;  the  trench  raid; 
the  slight  wound,  and  the  three  days  in  "blighty." 
Their  reasoning  seems  to  be  that  fighting  is  right 
now  that  Jack  is  doing  it.  To-day  I  met  Mrs.  Sands 
in  a  state  of  great  excitement;  Jack  has  received 
some  decoration,  —  what  she  could  not  tell  me.  He 
had  not  written  about  it,  of  course;  another  boy 
of  Mataquoit  had  announced  the  fact  on  a  picture 
post  card,  somewhat  blotted. 

I  confess  to  my  ledger,  but  not  to  Mrs.  Sands,  a 
growing,  personal  anxiety  in  the  face  of  the  extended 
operations  among  our  troops  and  our  apparently  suc- 
cessful offensive.  We  do  not  know  whether  Jack  is 
back  at  his  post;  was  that  wound  really  as  slight 
as  was  reported? 

August  18. 

Headlines  proclaim  the  complete  success  of  Foch's 
counter-offensive;  the  Germans  are  swept  back  all 
along  the  line.  The  Americans  have  covered  them- 
selves with  real  glory,  for  their  initiative,  their 
courage,  their  inability  to  discover  what  surrender 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  285 

means,  or  what  caution  means;  to-day's  paper  says 
that  two  million,  six  hundred  thousand  American 
soldiers  are  in  France. 

As  one  reads,  on  these  days  of  tragic  anniversary, 
the  account  —  how  full  of  dramatic  irony! — of 
the  Germans'  continued  retreat  in  the  Marne  sector, 
where  they  advanced  so  triumphantly  four  years 
ago,  as  one  holds  one's  breath  in  presence  of  a  hope, 
too  great  for  any  words,  that  the  tide  has  turned, 
one  realizes  that,  unless  this  mean  far  more  than  the 
retreat  of  the  Germans,  it  is  nothing;  it  must  mean 
the  ultimate  retreat  of  the  imperialistic  idea,  of 
man's  belief  in  force,  the  retreat  of  war  itself. 

September  3. 

A  brief  letter  from  Jack,  who  writes  that  he  is  all 
right,  quite  well,  and  physically  fit,  gladdened  my 
heart  to-day.  He  tells  of  a  great  service  of  thanks- 
giving held  in  Amiens  Cathedral  on  August  fifteenth, 
to  celebrate  the  deliverance  from  the  Germans. 
There  was  a  choir  of  French  soldiers;  the  altar  was 
surrounded  by  the  red,  white,  and  blue  flags  of  Great 
Britain,  France,  and  the  United  States.  Jack  could 
characterize  it  only  by  the  one  meager  adjective  of 
his  generation;  I  do  not  indeed  doubt  that  this 
spectacle  was  "great";  and  I  would  I  might  have 
seen  and  heard  so  much  of  hope  for  the  future  in 
this  spot  where  carven  stone  and  deep  stained  glass 
perpetuate  through  beauty  the  sacred  tradition  of 
the  past. 

That  music  of  which  he  wrote,  pealing  out  for 
victory  through  the  wonderful  Gothic  arches  of  that 
cathedral,  laid  strong  hold  upon  my  imagination 
and  mingled  in  my  thought  with  the  bell  which  I 


286  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

heard  tolling  through  the  fog  for  days  in  early 
August,  1914,  and  which  has  never  been  wholly  out 
of  my  ears  in  all  the  months  between.  That  was  a 
sound  as  of  a  passing  bell,  knelling  the  death  of  an 
era;  what  did  it  toll  out,  as  it  tolled  out  a  period? 
Dare  I  think  of  this  in  terms  of  my  hope? 

The  selfishness,  self-centeredness,  unconcern  of  us 
all,  whether  intellectual  and  spiritual,  or  material; 
the  unabashed  wealth,  the  luxury  of  the  few,  which 
belies  our  America,  and  misleads  the  working  man 
into  forgetting  that  the  vast  majority  of  people  of 
the  country  are,  like  himself,  workers. 

Much,  I  hope,  of  the  sensational  labor  and 
pseudo-labor  agitation,  much  of  the  theoretical 
side  of  the  "wrongs-of-the-poor-working-man"  prop- 
aganda. The  last  few  months  must  have  proved  to 
many  people  that  toil  is  good ;  must  have  suggested 
many  deeper  things  than  a  sense  of  wrongs,  notably, 
the  joy  of  helping.  Would  that  the  professional 
agitator  could  be  rung  out,  and  that  the  working 
man  might  be  permitted  to  use  that  most  precious 
of  his  possessions,  his  common  sense. 

Would  that,  with  the  walking  delegate,  might  be 
rung  out  the  half  charlatan  economist,  who  teaches 
the  mischievous  doctrine  that  character  is  wholly  the 
result  of  economic  conditions.  This  mechanistic 
conception  of  man  as  formed  in  personality  and  de- 
termined in  destiny  by  forces  external  to  himself 
has  wrought  untold  havoc  in  the  world,  has  started 
a  subtle  inner  disintegration  of  millions  of  men. 
Carried  to  its  logical  results,  it  means  intellectual, 
spiritual,  moral  death;  man  is  to  a  far  greater  ex- 
tent than  he  dreams  to-day  the  result  of  his  own 
endeavor. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  287 

So  may  vanish  also  the  materialism  of  high  and 
low,  of  the  masses  and  the  classes,  the  naive  trust 
in  wealth,  in  prosperity  as  the  goal  of  endeavor;  our 
smug  confidence  in  mechanical  and  material  treas- 
ures, that  growing  faith  in  externals  which  marked 
the  whole  preceding  period ;  all  that  ignoring  of  the 
inner  life,  and  over-emphasis  on  the  body,  that 
growing  tendency  toward  belief  in  the  laws  of  physi- 
cal progress  as  the  only  valid  laws,  which  has  ruled 
modern  life  and  thought. 

That  passing  bell  in  my  memory  rings  all  too 
slowly  to  ring  out  all  that  I  would  like  to  see  go: 
that  fine-wordiness  of  the  mere  talking  idealist,  the 
lofty  pretension,  unbacked  by  deed,  the  phrase- 
mongering of  the  higher  life.  Those  who  go  out  to 
death  uncomplainingly,  and  with  no  appeal  to  us 
for  pity  or  for  admiration,  have  rebuked  us  into 
silence.  Men  and  women  must  act,  must  be,  not 
merely  talk,  in  the  era  that  is  coming.  Would  that 
the  knell  could  sound  of  our  "isms"  and  mists  of 
thought,  our  current  novelties  of  faith  and  aspira- 
tion, our  passion  for  the  newest,  the  latest,  the  most 
astonishing  thing  in  beliefs,  preferably  occult;  also, 
of  all  our  bizarre  art  that  springs  from  the  eccentric, 
the  desire  to  startle,  all  speaking  irrationalism  in 
the  world  of  creative  activity,  resting  upon  a  some- 
thing unbalanced,  not  wholy  sane  in  human  nature. 
With  it  may  go  also  art  of  the  merely  analytical 
type,  signifying  a  clever  dissecting  of  human  nature, 
with  no  profound  imaginative  insight,  no  deep  sym- 
pathetic concern. 

Through  all  my  eager  thought  of  what  must  go 
sounds  the  music  of  that  vast  cathedral,  pealing  out 
victory;  may  it  prove  the  melody  of  life  to  be, — 


288  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  "still  sad  music  of  humanity."  May  it  bring 
swiftly  the  righting  of  every  real  industrial  wrong, 
in  a  world  where  all  men  shall  work  to  the  utmost 
at  their  different  posts;  where  shall  reign  such  a 
sense  of  responsibility  of  man  for  man  as  never  be- 
fore has  been  known.  May  the  music  of  a  great  and 
simple  faith  run  through  our  lives,  with  the  two 
great  and  sufficing  notes  sounding  therein :  belief  in 
the  universe  as  a  spiritual  universe ;  in  Christ's  way 
of  sacrifice  as  the  one  way  of  holiness.  And  may  the 
art  of  that  new  world  be  simple,  fundamental  as  its 
civic  and  its  religious  beliefs,  touching  the  common 
chords  of  love  and  faith  and  hope. 

September  10. 

All  summer  Billions  has  remained  incorrigible, 
while  every  one  else,  from  the  old  fisherman  on 
Hawk's  Island  to  Sam  Hicks,  the  odd-job  man,  has 
been  doing  his  bit.  Billions  has  steadily  and  ob- 
stinately refused  to  do  anything  for  the  war  and 
the  war  sufferers,  at  least  openly.  As  much  of  his 
wealth  as  could  flow  through  Katharine's  hands  has 
evidently  gone  to  the  relief  of  suffering  over  there; 
she  wrote  me  not  long  since  that  she  was  perplexed 
to  know  how  to  dispose  of  the  vast  sums  that  were 
coming  to  her.  Sending  her  huge  drafts  perhaps 
brings  to  Billions  a  pale  shadow  of  the  satisfaction 
to  which  he  looked  forward  all  his  life;  in  a  sense 
he  is  lavishing  his  wealth  on  Katharine. 

But  he  walks  about  in  a  loneliness  as  great  as  if 
he  were  the  sole  inhabitant  of  the  world,  with  one 
of  his  daughters  in  khaki  trousers,  one  in  Red  Cross 
uniform,  and  all  the  effort  of  his  life  gone  for 
naught.  His  whole  striving  has  been  to  give  them 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  289 

a  vast  heritage;  it  is  piled  high,  but  they  are  curi- 
ously unaware  of  it,  living  in  a  world  he  does  not 
know. 

He  remains  ostentatiously  idle,  though  there  is 
no  one  to  play  with  him;  ostentatiously  over- 
dressed, though  none  have  time  to  look  at  his 
clothes;  and,  though  he  is  personally  moderate, 
there  is  a  surfeit  of  food  upon  his  table. 

To  hear  him  on  the  subject  of  the  income  tax 
is  sulphurous;  he  told  me  in  a  rage  the  amount  he 
is  to  pay  this  year.  I  openly  rejoiced;  he  must  help 
clothe  our  soldiers  whether  he  will  or  no. 

But  within  the  past  week  a  change  has  come 
over  him :  the  hospital  in  which  Katharine  has  been 
working  was  bombed  by  a  German  aeroplane;  a 
wounded  soldier,  to  whom  she  was  attending,  was 
killed  before  her  eyes;  a  splinter  lodged  in  Katha- 
rine's shoulder,  causing  a  wound  painful  but  not 
dangerous. 

Billions  is  furious,  with  a  cold,  white  fury  that 
bodes  ill  for  the  Germans.  Whether  it  was  the 
cowardice  of  a  deliberate  attack  on  wounded  men, 
or  whether  it  was  because  his  own  flesh  and  blood 
had  been  injured,  I  do  not  know,  but  he  has  made 
a  vast  contribution  to  our  local  war  fund,  in  his 
own  name,  has  sent  another  to  New  York,  and  has. 
ordered  that  a  huge  shipment  of  gasoline  shall  be 
sent  to  France  from  one  of  his  refineries,  for  motor- 
truck purposes,  the  moving  of  arms  and  men. 

Naturally  I  too  am  stung  to  the  quick  by  the 
thought  of  Katharine's  suffering,  but  I  wish  that  I 
could  fathom  or  understand  this  selfishness  that 
protects  from  all  sense  of  hurt  until  one's  own  are 
hurt. 


290  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

September  17. 

Sitting  on  the  bridge  over  the  tidal  river  this 
afternoon,  as  the  tide  came  in,  I  decided  that  I  am 
one  hundred  and  one  per  cent  American. 

My  pride  is  not  mere  pride  in  the  successful  mili- 
tary victory  of  July  and  August;  it  is  joy  in  the 
great  task  undertaken,  one  never  before  undertaken 
by  people  or  nation.  For  in  all  the  recorded  history 
of  the  human  race,  through  all  time,  there  is  no 
single  event  more  important  than  this,  the  crossing 
of  two  million  and  more  men  of  a  free,  peace-loving 
country,  to  fight,  in  a  battle  that  means  for  them 
and  for  America,  no  gain,  only  loss,  and  sorrow, 
and  bitter  wounds,  and  death,  that  other  men  may 
go  free.  And  in  all  recorded  history  there  is  nothing 
more  significant  than  the  self-denial  in  the  matter 
of  food  from  end  to  end  of  America,  much  of  it 
voluntary,  that  Europe  might  be  fed. 

A  new  era  is  ushered  in,  one  nation  voluntarily 
taking  upon  itself  the  burden  of  others;  is  it  the 
beginning  of  a  time  when  national  ethics  will  rise 
to  the  height  of  individual  ethics  and  perhaps  be- 
yond? 

My  culture-doubts  vanish;  so  also  my  fear  lest 
the  great  race-amalgamation  stamp  out  our  in- 
herited national  characteristics.  All  have  responded 
equally  to  the.  challenge ;  all  clamor  for  a  share  of 
the  great  and  sacred  work.  I  am  proud,  proud  to 
the  point  of  pain  of  being  an  American  citizen: 
with  bowed  head  I  consecrate  myself  and  the  rest 
of  my  days  to  the  task. 

No  past  failure  or  present  menace  must  deprive 
us  of  a  sense  of  the  greatness  of  our  heritage.  We 
haVe  risen  to  a  great  moment;  have  taken  upon 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  291 

ourselves  great  international  duties;  the  high  sig- 
nificance of  this  hour  we  must  not  lose,  nor  ever 
fail  in  the  obligation  it  has  laid  upon  us. 

November  11. 

The  great  news,  the  greatest  news  on  earth,  un- 
contradicted  as  yet,  of  peace. 

November  14. 

I  wander  by  the  brown  salt  marshes  where,  in 
and  out,  the  water  sparkles  with  brighter  gleam 
than  of  old.  .  .  .  Tim  barks  more  joyously  than 
I  have  ever  heard  him.  .  .  .  Peace,  incredible 
peace.  .  .  .  One  breathes  differently  since  No- 
vember eleventh.  Not  being  where  I  can  share 
the  service  of  thanksgiving  in  a  great  cathedral,  I 
seek  my  altar  out  of  doors,  and  listen  to  the  thunder 
of  the  sea. 

I  am  beginning  to  be  able  to  think  again;  during 
the  days  since  the  great  news  came  I  have  done 
little  but  walk,  or  cobble  with  as  great  intensity 
as  if  it  were  for  me  to  put  the  broken  world  to- 
gether and  mend  it,  with  strong  waxed  thread.  At 
first  I  think  I  was  bewildered  by  the  silence  of  the 
guns,  though  it  was  with  the  soul's  ear  only  that 
I  have  heard  them. 

The  country  from  end  to  end  is  celebrating  vic- 
tory; victory  of  what?  of  military  might,  or  of 
that  hope  of  the  world  which  we  have  chosen  to 
call  democracy.  The  country  has  been  deeply 
stirred  and  has  awakened,  but  to  what  of  lasting 
import  has  it  awakened?  Will  the  passion  of  our 
great  effort  animate  our  future,  or  will  it  waste 
itself  in  futile  shouts,  from  a  hundred  and  ten 


292  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

million  throats  of,  "We  won  the  war."  As  the  lads 
come  home,  are  they  coming  to  the  old  America, 
of  triumphant  outer  progress,  of  individual  enter- 
prise, and  laissez-faire  as  regards  the  general  wel- 
fare, or  to  an  America  making  good  in  all  that  our 
forefathers  hoped  and  planned  and  prayed  for,  all 
that  we,  building  on  their  foundation,  have  added 
to  their  hope? 

The  new  questioning  as  to  the  relation  of  man 
to  man  must  be  worked  out  better  than  it  has  ever 
been,  worked  out,  not  merely  thought  out.  No  old 
answer  will  suffice.  If  our  America  is  to  go  on,  it 
must  be  America  on  a  higher  spiral. 


XXXIII 

November  17. 

The  tension  of  the  war  situation  has  been  re- 
lieved, and  now  follow  long  empty  days  wherein 
creeping  anxieties,  suppressed  during  the  time 
when  our  attention  was  focused  on  the  western 
front,  become  manifest.  The  exultation  of  No- 
vember H  gives  way  to  subtler  misgivings  of  de- 
feat, and  a  menace  which  has  long  been  at  the  back 
of  my  mind  threatens  openly.  Through  all  the 
months  while  Russia  has  been  boiling  up  like  a 
seething  cauldron  I  have  been  waiting,  with  sus- 
pended judgment,  for  information  that  would  en- 
able me  to  form  a  decisive  opinion  regarding  this 
new  power  of  Bolshevism. 

Last  autumn  ended  that  miracle  of  a  peaceful 
revolution,  almost  without  bloodshed,  which,  in 
the  spring  of  1917,  had  astonished  the  world  with 
its  swift  and  happy  overthrow  of  the  tyranny  of 
centuries,  its  swift  inauguration  of  a  new  era.  The 
reports  that  have  come  since  then,  both  of  destruc- 
tion and  of  construction  on  the  part  of  this  new 
and  constantly  growing  power,  open  corridors  of 
thought  down  which  one  almost  fears  to  tread. 
They  tell  the  story  of  contemporary  Russia  as  of 
one  long  welter  of  blood ;  the  populace,  the  so-called 
"people,"  are  massacring  the  bourgeois;  a  century 
ago  in  France  it  was  the  bourgeois  who  massacred 


294  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

the  nobility;  from  what  dregs  of  humanity  will 
arise,  in  another  hundred  years,  the  Caliban  people 
who  will  massacre  the  proletariat?  Has  progress 
then,  as  at  times  it  seems  to  have,  the  clumsy,  crush- 
ing gait  of  a  tank,  leaving  death  in  its  wake? 

That  grand  phrase,  "the  rule  of  the  people,"  a 
sacred  article  in  our  creed,  now  takes  on  an  un- 
expected and  sinister  meaning,  falling  upon  our 
ears  like  a  threat,  as  we  face  the  encroaching  power 
of  the  lower;  will  this  in  time  become  the  power  of 
the  lowest?  Now  that  the  under  dog  has  risen  in 
the  Russian  Bolshevik,  and  that  the  under  dog  is 
mad,  —  mad  to  wipe  out  all  who  have  shown  mas- 
tery, the  question  as  to  whether  he  will  succeed  be- 
comes the  most  crucial  question  before  mankind  the 
round  world  over.  The  most  terrible  menace  here 
is  not  the  war  against  political  institutions,  but  the 
war  against  the  sacredest  human  instincts;  if  re- 
ports be  true,  family  life  and  love,  religion,  the  only 
enduring  foundations  of  government,  are  threatened. 

It  is  borne  in  upon  us  with  appalling  clearness 
that  other  autocracies  may  follow  that  of  ruling 
houses;  that  democracy,  or  alleged  democracy,  holds 
within  itself  potential  utter  tyranny,  more  devas- 
tating than  any  other  tyranny  known ;  demos,  liter- 
ally, may  imply  mob  rule,  the  surging  up  from  the 
depths.  How  often  here  in  America,  whose  estab- 
lished freedom  we  have  taken  so  lightly  and  irre- 
sponsibly for  granted,  have  I  heard  the  loud  voice 
overmaster  the  right  voice,  and  seen  the  will  of  the 
people  vanish  before  the  will  of  the  demagogue! 
Whether  Russia's  present  plight  is  due  primarily  to 
the  stirring  up  of  the  lowest  instincts  and  passions, 
or  to  the  fact  that  a  little  coterie  of  self-appointed 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  295 

Tsars  are  imposing  upon  the  people  a  cruel  and 
shallow  rationalistic  scheme,  wherein  formulae  of 
progress  are  substituted  for  knowledge  of  those 
characteristics  of  human  nature  that  make  for 
growth,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  In  either  case,  the 
country  is  groaning  under  a  narrow  class  rule,  and 
the  imperialism  of  the  many  is  substituted  for  the 
imperialism  of  the  one.  It  would  be  idle  to  deny 
this  menace  of  Bolshevism,  all  the  world  round; 
idle  to  deny  that  we  of  America,  who  have  been 
living  in  the  full  security  of  the  principles  of  1776, 
are  threatened  in  that  freedom  of  which,  to  tell 
truth,  we  have  never  been  wholly  worthy.  We  have 
serenely  taken  it  for  granted  that  freedom  was  a 
matter  settled  once  for  all;  now  we  face  a  situation 
in  which  the  question  may  be  asked  as  to  whether 
we  are  to  keep  or  lose  this  vast  privilege  to  which 
we  have  not  lived  up.  In  this  slaughter  of  the 
bourgeois  the  moving  finger  points  to  us,  as  it 
points  to  our  kind  in  other  lands.  Are  we,  how 
are  we  to  escape  red  revolution? 

I  disclaim  prejudice;  I  trust  that  my  mind  is 
open  to  real  aspects  of  progress,  yet  I  do  not  think 
that  the  bell  boy  should  take  the  place  of  the  rector 
of  the  university,  or  the  apprentice  that  of  the  man- 
ager of  the  factory,  as  I  am  told  is  the  case  in  parts 
of  contemporary  Russia.  One  reverences  essential 
man,  the  human  being  as  such,  yet  one  discerns 
grades  and  shades  of  intellect  that  make  men  ca- 
pable of  serving  their  fellows  by  leading  them.  It 
is  for  those  who  hold  a  liberal  faith,  and  who  have 
a  measure  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  training  to 
say  whether  democracy  shall  continue  to  be  a  great 
and  increasing  force  making  for  freedom,  or  whether 


296  A   WORLD    TO    MEND 

it  shall  become  a  degraded  and  degrading  tyranny 
whose  end  is  chaos.  The  issue  is  clear,  as  we  face 
the  appalling  possibility  of  a  world  without  leader- 
ship; if  art,  culture,  fineness  of  life,  yes,  even  jus- 
tice and  a  sense  of  fair  play  are  to  be  served,  all  who 
have  shared  these  gifts  must  go  down  more  than 
halfway  to  meet  the  populace  in  friendliness;  must 
show  them  their  need,  their  lack,  must  help  them 
up,  sternly  holding  before  them  higher  ideals  than 
they  can  work  out  for  themselves.  The  best  things 
in  life  never  yet  came  from  mass  movement. 

November  20. 

Katharine  writes  of  touching  scenes  in  France, 
glad  village  celebrations  as  soldiers  go  to  their  homes 
to  share  with  their  wives  and  children  their  joy  in 
the  deliverance  of  France;  of  a  little  ripple  of 
gayety  in  Paris,  where  uniformed  figures  of  many 
countries  meet  and  greet  each  other  with  smiles. 
War  vanishes,  and  the  feeling  of  relief  is  like  that 
when  tooth  and  claw  of  wild  beast  are  drawn  from 
shivering  flesh  and  quivering  nerves.  As  I  read,  I 
can  almost  hear  little  shouts  of  laughter  as  the 
French  children  begin  again  to  play,  and  can  see  the 
smiling  wrinkles  about  the  faces  of  the  old,  as 
Jeanne  and  Jeannot  find  themselves  safe  again, 
though  without  a  roof  over  their  heads,  for  the 
end  of  the  adventure  of  eighty  years. 

This  last  letter  was  more  outspoken  than  any  I 
have  ever  had  from  Katharine,  and  it  gave  me 
clearer  glimpses  than  I  have  ever  had  of  the  recesses 
of  her  fine  nature.  Under  all  the  hurt  sympathy 
with  the  suffering  about  her  is  a  little  exultation  in 
having  broken  the  chains  that  bound  her,  and  having 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  297 

won  her  freedom  to  act,  to  serve.  She  stoutly  re- 
fuses her  father's  cabled  suggestion  that  she  come 
home  at  once;  there  is  more  than  enough  to  do, 
with  her  many  patients  and  other  individuals  whom 
she  is  trying  to  help.  She  is  building  a  house  for 
an  old  woman  who  fled  from  her  village  in  the  Cha- 
teau-Thierry region,  with  the  one  survivor  of  her 
household,  a  large  gray  goose.  Katharine  discovered 
her,  spent  with  hunger,  wandering  in  a  field  in 
search  of  food,  talking  to  the  goose  as  if  it  were 
human.  The  goose  was  performing  that  best  of  ser- 
vices, listening  —  what  mortal  could  do  more?  — 
as  her  mistress  poured  out  the  story  of  the  shelling 
of  her  home:  son,  daughter  and  their  three  children 
perished  with  the  house  when  the  bomb  fell.  Granny 
was  untouched  because  she  was  out  feeding  the 
goose. 

"Her  new  home  is  to  be  on  the  site  of  the  old  one, 
as  nearly  as  we  can  find  it  in  the  heap  of  rubble 
and  ashes  that  was  the  village.  I  am  going  to  put 
her  in  charge  of  four  little  orphans  who  were  brought 
to  the  hospital  the  other  day.  Granny  sits  on  a 
splintered  beam  and  watches  the  foundation  stones 
of  her  house  as  they  are  laid  by  German  prisoners; 
and  the  goose  affectionately  pecks  at  the  buttons  on 
her  gown,  which  is  rather  a  pity,  as  there  are  but 
two  left.  You  see  I  cannot  possibly  come  home 
now;  there  are  my  three  tubercular  soldiers  who 
must  be  placed  where  they  can  have  care  and  proper 
food;  and  there  is  a  whole  small  hospital  of  blind 
soldiers  whose  fate  rests  with  me.  Oh,  I  can't  begin 
to  tell  you  all  there  is  to  do !  I  will  come  back  some 
day,  when  I  am  needed  there  more  than  I  am  here." 

I  refolded  Katharine's  letter  and  sent  it  to  Grand- 


298  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

mother  Brown;  wisdom  is  justified  of  her  grand- 
children. 

It  is  the  moment  of  the  young;  they  rise  grandly 
to  its  challenge;  and  we  older  folk?  It  is  our  great 
hour,  too.  With  as  much  of  devotion;  with  less, 
perhaps,  of  hope ;  with  fewer  years  in  which  to  help 
make  good  the  better  state  for  which  the  world  is 
striving,  we  face  the  future. 

We  envy  the  young,  yet  we  have  at  this  tragic 
crisis  a  service  that  the  young  cannot  render.  Our 
years  are  assets,  if  we  count  them  and  what  they 
have  taught  us  aright.  It  is  for  us  whose  memories 
reach  back  over  decades  of  human  life,  who  have 
also  some  ripened  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the 
world  and  its  finer  culture,  to  help  bring  what  was 
best  in  the  wisdom  of  the  past  to  the  making  of  the 
future ;  to  offer  in  like  service  all  that  has  been  deep- 
est in  our  individual  experience.  It  is  for  us  to  keep 
youth  from  breaking  faith  with  the  past,  from  re- 
linquishing the  spiritual  and  ethical  standards  won 
by  our  forbears  in  long  struggle;  to  guard  it  lest  it 
fall  victim  to  raw  theory,  —  a  special  menace  in  a 
scientific  era.  To  think,  observe,  remember ;  to  keep 
a  quiet  mind  through  the  turmoil ;  to  try  quietly  to 
aid  in  working  things  out,  there  is  our  task. 

It  is  for  us  to  help  keep  alive  faith  in  the  inner 
realities,  denial  of  the  mechanistic  conception  of 
life,  for  us,  who  know  from  experience  the  falsity  of 
this  conception.  Of  all  the  wisdom  that  we  can 
bring  the  young  this  is  the  supreme  truth :  that  the 
living  will  is  the  only  enduring  force  in  life;  that 
they  are  wrong  who  teach  that  all  abides  but  in  cir- 
cumstance ;  that  the  age-long  struggle  of  the  human 
soul  is  all  that  counts. 


A   WORLD    TO    MEND  299 

November  25. 

Mataquoit  keeps  on  with  many  of  her  war  activi- 
ties, notably  with  one  great  war  activity,  talking. 
Here,  as  elsewhere  throughout  the  country,  the  story 
is  told  and  retold  of  how  America  won  the  war. 
Local  pride  rises  high;  to  listen  to  discussions  at 
street  corner  or  in  post  office  is  to  become  almost 
convinced  that  Mataquoit,  single-handed,  defeated 
the  hosts  of  the  Central  Powers.  Old  Silas  Marks, 
the  hotel  keeper  reminds  us  that  he  prophesied  the 
very  day  and  place  in  which  the  Germans  would 
flee  before  our  American  boys;  Phil  Landers,  the 
expressman,  and  Abraham  Jencks  of  the  rural  de- 
livery regard  the  outcome  as  in  some  mysterious 
way  the  result  of  strategy  and  tactics  recommended 
by  themselves;  and  Enoch  Ames,  the  truckman, 
nodding  sagely,  asks  if  he  had  not  always  said  we 
would  "show  them." 

No  one  can  be  more  proud  than  I  of  the  glory  of 
American  courage  as  it  has  been  shown  in  these 
hard  months;  stories  of  heroism,  individual  and  of 
whole  companies,  have  poured  in  fast  upon  us.  Yet 
it  is  fatuous  to  say  that  we  won  the  war.  We  brought 
decisive  help  after  four  years  of  death  struggle  to 
those  who,  having  given  all,  were  well-nigh  spent. 
Our  eleventh-hour  service  is  bringing  us  all  too  gen- 
erous praise  from  statesmen  and  from  populace 
abroad,  and  a  self-praise  at  home  which  is  as  foolish 
as  it  is  alarming.  This  tendency  toward  boastful- 
ness  is  the  greatest  menace  our  country  faces;  our 
conviction  that  we  are  the  best  and  most  remarkable 
of  all  people,  —  what  can  it  lead  to  except  defeat? 

Perhaps  we  can  keep  in  our  democracy  something 
of  the  courage,  the  dash,  the  sense  of  team  work 


300  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  our  fighting  battalions  over  there,  and  eliminate 
something  of  our  over-swift  self -congratulation. 
Even  now  one  detects  a  higher  note,  an  exultation 
in  sharing,  through  choice,  the  hard  destiny  of  the 
nations.  Mataquoit  has  become  more  than  Mata- 
quoit  in  reaching  out  for  its  part  of  the  world  bur- 
den; and  if  Mataquoit  can  rise  above  itself  in  self- 
forgetful  devotion,  any  place  can.  Two  of  our 
wounded  have  come  home,  one,  young  Melton  of 
our  hardware  store,  who  must  wear  a  wooden  leg 
for  life,  and  Joe  Leavitt,  the  postmaster's  son,  who 
has  lost  an  eye.  Sorrow  has  come  to  many  a  home, 
with  cruel  swiftness;  a  bride  of  six  weeks,  daughter 
of  Rankin  of  the  drug  store  here,  learned  first  from  a 
list  of  casualties  in  the  local  paper  of  the  death  of  her 
young  husband  in  France.  Lover,  brother,  son, — 
the  sad  tidings  drifts  in,  and  one  by  one  my  neigh- 
bors are  stricken;  but,  here  as  throughout  the 
country,  two  by  two,  and  three  by  three,  and  many 
by  many,  they  rise  to  the  challenge.  Patient  fingers 
still  fold  bandages  innumerable;  schemes  for  gar- 
dens for  the  coming  year  take  form  in  long  lists  of 
seeds  to  be  purchased  and  plans  of  beds  to  be  made  ; 
on  the  street,  in  the  sitting-room  windows,  at  lec- 
tures, in  trains,  all  women  are  knitting:  to  me  they 
are  symbols;  they  are  knitting  together  the  hearts 
of  men,  knitting  together  the  lives  of  the  citizens 
of  the  world. 

A  line  from  Jack  brings  the  news  for  which  I  have 
been  waiting  with  anxiety  greater  than  I  confessed 
to  myself;  I  dreaded  to  know  what  the  last  hours 
before  the  armistice  had  meant  for  him.  He  is 
well,  he  writes,  but  a  bit  "seedy";  presently  he  is 
to  have  a  week  on  the  Riviera  and  will  write  me 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  301 

a  long  letter  from  there,  for  he  has  much  to  tell 
me.  Patience  is  the  cobbler's  special  virtue. 

As  the  way  of  peace  opens  out  before  us  and 
thoughts  of  the  future  overmaster  all  other 
thoughts  of  men  in  shop  and  church  and  market 
place,  while  all  the  air  seems  waiting  for  the  wiser 
statesmanship  of  the  future,  I  am  saddened  by  in- 
creasing attacks  upon  my  old  friend  and  erstwhile 
mother,  England,  mother  not  only  of  my  race,  of 
my  inherited  instincts  and  standards,  but  mother 
also  of  those  free  institutions  which  face  the  future 
with  promise  and  with  endless  possibilities  of  ex- 
pansion. Nay,  England  is  perhaps  rather  my 
grandmother,  whom  I  cherish  in  my  heart,  who 
taught  my  mother  America  the  underlying  ruling 
principles  of  her  life.  Shall  a  man,  shall  a  great 
nation,  not  reverence  its  grandmother,  especially 
one  who  stands  for  firm,  slow-growing,  stable  free- 
dom, who  builds  on  strong  foundations,  steadily 
achieves  more  and  more  of  liberty,  never  gives  up, 
knows  not  defeat? 

Yet  the  sons  of  England  who  come  in  friendliness 
to  talk  to  American  audiences  are  dismayed  by  the 
amount  of  anti-British  feeling  here.  What  is  the 
chief  source  of  this  would  be  difficult  to  say ;  doubt- 
less the  Irish  have  more  than  any  one  else  to  do 
with  keeping  the  flame  of  grievance  alive;  yet  it 
seems  folly  to  cherish  a  grievance  for  the  sake  of 
the  grievance.  Foolish  text  books,  too,  perpetuate 
that  old,  brief  feud  between  mother  and  child;  but 
surely  it  is  bad  taste  to  flaunt  family  quarrels  in 
public.  None  but  a  barbarian  people  would  teach 
the  doctrine  of  hate  to  its  young,  and  it  is  quite 
time  that  our  Revolutionary  War  was  presented  in 


302  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

all  our  histories  as  a  domestic  dispute  that  resulted 
in  great  benefit  to  both  members  of  the  family. 
Surely  through  this,  as  through  nothing  else, 
Britain  learned  that  fashion  of  treating  her  colonies 
that  has  resulted  in  her  great  daughter  nations  the 
world  over  counting  it  their  chief  glory  to  belong  to 
her.  In  that  war,  as  in  many  another,  the  defeated 
nation  won  the  most.  England,  realizing  a  mistake, 
set  about  to  correct  it;  the  story  of  all  succeeding 
decades  until  the  present  day  is  the  story  of  per- 
sistent and  successful  efforts  to  secure  more  freedom 
for  the  individual  man,  to  make  government  more 
and  more  sensitive  to  the  popular  will.  Thus  they 
have  achieved,  politically,  at  least,  a  more  real 
democracy  than  our  own,  a  more  flexible  system: 
the  voter,  be  he  never  so  humble,  has  a  larger  share 
in  affairs;  the  government  that  does  not  satisfy  the 
majority  falls.  They  try  more  experiments,  admit 
more  changes  than  we,  as  is  shown  in  their  attitude 
toward  labor;  with  a  certain  anxiety  they  pursue 
liberty,  trying  to  keep  a  finger  on  the  hem  of  her 
garment;  we,  flushed  with  success  in  that  far-off 
Revolution  of  76,  drag  her  in  chains  at  the  wheels 
of  our  triumphant  chariot,  oversure  that  she  is  our 
handmaiden  forever.  Yet  part  of  that  pride  where- 
in we  hug  ourselves  from  generation  to  generation 
is  baseless.  How  much  have  we  grown  since  that 
moment  of  triumph,  which,  unless  we  change  our 
ways,  may  ultimately  prove  our  moment  of  defeat? 
Have  we  not  petrified  somewhat,  in  old  way  and 
habit,  conceiving  that  we  have  nothing  more  to 
learn  and  little  more  to  do?  Possibly  the  English 
are  wiser  than  we  in  keeping  an  unwritten  consti- 
tution; perhaps  ours,  written  or  printed,  gives  the 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  303 

effect  of  a  something  settled  once  and  forever. 
Whatever  the  causes,  our  English  cousins  have  out- 
stripped us,  recognizing  liberty  as  a  process,  not  a 
completed  achievement. 

It  is  time  that  we  realized  here,  as  men  do  realize 
in  England,  that  our  destiny  and  that  of  England 
are  inextricably  bound  together.  It  is  time  that 
our  text  books  were  radically  changed,  in  a  way  not 
only  to  eliminate  all  suggestion  of  lasting  bad  feel- 
ing, but  to  emphasize  the  likeness  in  spirit  between 
us  and  our  English  next  of  kin.  In  the  new  light  on 
things  it  should  be  clear  to  all  American  citizens 
that  the  Fourth  of  July  should  be  celebrated 
by  English  and  Americans  together  as  marking  a 
victory  of  the  creed  for  which  both  stand,  faith  in 
freedom,  belief  in  individual  right,  individual 
chance  to  work  out  individual  duty,  a  victory 
against  the  German  George,  who  was  using  English 
armies  to  fight  against  English  purposes  and  Eng- 
lish principles  in  1775-1776. 

Now  that  we  have  partly  learned  to  understand 
each  other  in  fighting  side  by  side,  neither  victor 
over  the  other,  we  must  march  together,  conscious 
of  a  common  aim,  each  nation  helping  the  other 
in  clarifying  ideas,  in  correcting  mistakes,  in  keep- 
ing ideals  high.  There  is  much  that  we  could  teach 
each  other;  there  are  many  ways  in  which  we  could 
help  each  other  in  taking  up  an  enlarging  share  of 
the  world's  burden.  That  race  which,  in  all  its 
branches,  has  done  more  than  any  other  race  on 
earth  to  found  and  make  permanent  free  institu- 
tions has  a  right  to  the  leadership  which  it  has  won. 
It  is  not  for  a  man  of  my  calling  to  use  extravagant 
language;  cobblers  are,  I  imagine,  a  rather  silent 


304  A  WORLD   TO  MEND 

and  reticent  folk.  It  is  therefore  impossible  for  me 
to  express  the  full  extent  of  my  rejoicing  that  Eng- 
lish and  Americans,  Australians,  Canadians,  New 
Zealanders  are  learning  comradeship  in  trench  and 
hospital  and  open  field.  Will  it  eventually  be 
written,  as  Germany's  greatest  among  her  many 
great  achievements,  that  she  has  welded  together, 
by  a  bond  that  naught  can  break,  the  scattered 
members  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race?  Perhaps  the 
supreme  contribution  of  that  self-efficiency  will  be 
that  she  has  done  what  nothing  else  could  have 
done,  has  made  them  forget  distances,  old  quarrels, 
grudges,  misunderstandings,  and  has  set  them  as 
soldiers  of  liberty,  fighting  side  by  side,  in  unity 
of  a  common  aim. 

Minor  as  well  as  major  services  could  we  Ameri- 
cans and  the  English  render  each  other;  we  could 
learn  something  from  their  silences. 

"Tell  your  men,"  said  a  young  English  officer  to 
an  American  friend,  "not  to  talk  so  much."  It 
seemed  that  some  of  our  soldiers,  on  setting  foot 
on  French  soil,  had  boasted  that  they  had  come  over 
to  win  the  war;  English  soldiers  had  promptly  re- 
torted 'that  the  war  was  already  won,  and  that  the 
English  and  French  had  won  it.  "Not  to  talk  so 
much."  It  is  in  our  over-easy  self-congratulation 
that  we  differ  from  the  English,  who  hardly  admit 
to  themselves  victory,  sometimes  even  when  they 
have  won.  One  can  but  acknowledge,  especially 
in  reading  American  newspapers,  full  of  outcries 
over  what  we  have  done,  that  the  English  are,  in 
this  respect,  better  bred  than  we.  They  must 
pardon  us  if  our  climate,  with  its  exhilaration  and 
its  sparkle,  has  penetrated  to  our  inner  conscious- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  305 

ness  and  to  our  vocabulary;  our  boasting  is,  per- 
haps, not  so  bad  as  it  sounds,  being  that  of  a 
vigorous  child,  brimming  over  with  hope  and  with 
determination  as  to  what  it  is  going  to  do. 

On  the  other  hand,  these  English  friends  and  rela- 
tives who  tell  us  so  often,  with  an  elder  brother's 
intonations,  how  much  better  every  aspect  of  life  is 
ordered  over  there,  should  be  reminded  that  it  ought 
to  be.  They  have  had  a  thousand  years  and  more 
in  which  to  arrange  the  ways  of  their  household,  we, 
little  more  than  a  hundred,  nor  have  they  thou- 
sands upon  thousands  of  foster  children  to  whom 
the  very  alphabet  of  civilization  must  be  taught.  As 
we  learn  from  the  silences  of  our  British  cousins, 
perhaps  they  may  learn  a  bit  from  us  of  good- 
natured  friendliness  to  all  and  sundry,  a  real  and 
abiding  sense  of  the  truth  that  "a  man's  a  man  for 
a'  that."  If  they  have  surpassed  us  in  political 
democracy,  they  have  fallen  behind  in  social,  or 
shall  I  say,  personal  democracy?. 


XXXIV 

November  28. 

The  world  crashes;  tyrants  fall  from  their  thrones, 
following  the  example  of  the  German  Kaiser,  whose 
abdication  on  November  tenth  I  wholly  forgot  to 
record,  as  it  seemed  unimportant  by  the  side  of 
the  great  coming  of  peace.  Yet  surely  there  is  sig- 
nificance in  a  moment,  unparalleled  in  history,  when 
a  Yankee  schoolmaster,  spokesman  for  many  great 
nations  in  arms,  points  a  finger  at  the  Hohenzollerns, 
telling  them  to  climb  down  from  their  thrones,  and 
they  obey,  while  scores  of  petty  princelings  make 
haste  to  follow.  When  morning  brings  us  no  news 
of  an  empire  overthrown  or  a  dynasty  falling,  I 
feel  a  sense  of  lack,  as  if  Widow  Frayne  had  forgot- 
ten some  part  of  my  breakfast. 

I  have  often  wondered,  in  reading  of  great  and 
tragic  epochs  like  that  of  the  French  Revolution, 
how  people  could  go  in  their  old  ways  through  times 
of  such  deep  convulsion,  eating,  drinking,  sleeping, 
and  busying  themselves  in  every-day  affairs.  Yet 
our  common  life  moves  steadily  through  these  far 
greater  and  more  tragic  days ;  old  Mrs.  Abies  totters 
down  to  the  grocery,  as  usual,  to  buy  her  pound 
package  of  oatmeal  and  five  cents'  worth  of  pepper- 
mints. Abraham  Jencks,  of  the  rural  delivery,  comes 
out  and  rakes  leaves  to  bank  his  house  for  winter; 
and  I  thread  my  needles  and  try  to  take  my  stitches 
as  methodically  as  ever.  Yet  when,  in  late  after- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  307 

noon,  I  walk  on  the  beach,  I  am  aware,  in  the  very 
ripple  of  the  little  waves  at  my  feet,  of  the  passing 
of  an  epoch.  Chaos  is  come  again,  chaos  in  which 
the  breaking  up  of  old  worlds  leaves  us  with  eyes 
straining  for  the  first  glimpse  of  a  new  world  be- 
ginning to  take  form. 

I  would  that  a  spirit  which  is  now  abroad  in  the 
land  might  become  one  of  its  permanent  character- 
istics. These  are  days  of  almost  universal  friend- 
liness, when  differences  are  forgotten,  and  old  feuds 
are  washed  away  in  the  incoming  tide  of  good  feeling 
all  over  the  earth.  Leavitt,  the  postmaster,  and 
Melton,  the  hardware  man,  who  have  cherished  a 
quarrel  for  thirty  years,  forgot  it  and  shook  hands 
quite  simply  when  they  happened  to  meet  in  the 
presence  of  their  wounded  boys.  It  looks  as  if  the 
peace  treaty,  when  it  is  made,  would  incorporate  an 
article  containing  a  settlement  of  the  boundary 
question  long  disputed  between  old  Joshua  Ridgway 
and  Marks,  the  hotel  keeper.  The  newspapers  and 
magazines  of  England,  France,  America,  with  their 
expressions  of  new  international  admirations  and 
affections,  are  not  more  full  of  unwonted,  generous 
appreciation  than  is  the  air  of  Mataquoit.  Mrs. 
Sands,  meeting  me  upon  the  street,  places  something 
in  my  hand,  saying  simply:  "A  letter  from  Jack," 
and  I  go  on,  quite  forgetting  to  notice  whether  or 
not  she  is  wearing  foolish,  high-heeled  shoes.  The 
rival  ministers  have  buried,  not  the  hatchet,  but  the 
hymn  book  that  has  been  a  bone  of  contention,  and 
are  holding  united  services. 

If  any  peace  treaty  could  embody  the  feeling  of 
peace  that  now  prevails,  the  world  over,  it  would 
be  a  lasting  one  indeed. 


308  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

November  30. 

I  have  been  reading  a  peculiarly  American  article 
in  a  Sunday  paper,  describing  in  glowing  fashion 
our  progress  in  mechanics,  proudly  listing  our  Ameri- 
can inventions,  notably  aeroplane  and  submarine, 
and  calling  upon  the  world  to  witness  that  there 
should  be  no  tendency  toward  pessimism :  we  should 
have  faith  in  the  future  of  the  human  race  because 
of  its  power  of  invention. 

It  filled  me  with  distaste.  Though  I  should 
hardly  dare  write  it  save  in  this  old  ledger  where  no 
eyes  but  mine  will  ever  see  it,  I  have  for  years  per- 
mitted myself  a  certain  skepticism  regarding  many 
aspects  of  modern  progress.  These  mechanical  con- 
trivances, —  aeroplane,  submarine,  engines  and  ma- 
chines innumerable;  this  endless  chasing  by  hu- 
manity of  the  active  muscles  of  its  own  tail;  this 
external,  mechanical  development  which  we  call 
progress,  and  which  is,  in  great  part,  a  vicious  circle 
of  impulses,  appetites,  passions,  ministered  to  by 
more  and  more  complex  machines,  —  what  will  it 
all  lead  to,  except  around  to  the  tip  of  the  tail  again? 

By  centuries  of  effort,  by  applying  much  of  our 
best  brain  power  to  problems  of  physics,  we  have 
got  back  to  the  point,  —  oh,  supreme  achievement! 
—  where  we  can  fight  like  winged,  prehistoric  mon- 
sters in  the  air,  like  crawling,  mammoth  amphibians 
under  sea,  and  chaos  is  indeed  come  again.  Our 
chief  concern  should  have  been  learning  how  not 
to  fight  at  all.  Might  it  not  be  well  to  check  a  bit 
this  one-sided  development  and  give  our  minds  and 
souls  a  chance  to  catch  up  with  our  legs  and  wings 
and  fins? 

Long  before  the  storm  broke  and  the  old  period 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  309 

ended,  many  of  us  had  realized  that  all  was  not  well 
with  us,  that  we  were  living  in  a  material  paradise 
with  thought  chiefly  for  pleasure  and  for  comfort. 
With  each  successive  year  in  the  last  decade  preced- 
ing the  crash  the  consciousness  grew  strong  within 
me  that  our  concern  was  too  much  with  the  body, 
with  search  for  wealth,  with  mere  things.  This 
conviction  grew  so  insistent  that,  though  I  am  no 
poet,  I  attempted  to  express  myself  in  verse: 
"Have  pity,  Lord,  we  prosper"  — 

But  my  feeling  was  so  strong  that  it  refused  to  fit 
itself  to  words  or  metre,  and  merely  continued  to 
smoulder  within  me. 

Those  of  us  who  have  been  deeply  concerned  with 
the  inner  development  of  the  race  long  ago  divined 
that  our  tragic  prosperity  contained  within  itself  a 
threat  of  ultimate  defeat.  I  realized  this,  yet,  pre- 
occupied with  books,  ideas,  theories,  I  did  not  stir 
myself  to  action,  not  knowing  how  to  begin.  I  blame 
myself  and  men  of  my  own  stamp  quite  as  I  blame 
those  apostles  of  theoretical  and  applied  science  who 
have  misled  the  multitudes;  more  than  I  blame  the 
great  mass  of  the  misled.  We  who  held  a  faith  in 
better  things  and  did  not  find  practical  ways  of 
making  that  faith  tell  have  been  shirkers;  we  have 
avoided  enlistment  in  the  battle  for  our  kind. 

My  own  repentence  is  worked  out,  not  in  sack- 
cloth and  ashes,  but  in  leather  and  shoemaker's  wax, 
here  where  I  may  sit  and  hear  men  speak,  and  may 
make  my  voice  heard  among  them. 

December  3. 

In  spite  of  my  practical  endeavors  in  going  faith- 
fully to  town  meeting,  to  all  committee  meetings  for 


310  A   WORLD   TO    MEND 

which  I  am  responsible,  and  trying  constantly  to  do 
my  share  in  improving  the  institutions  of  the  place ; 
in  spite  of  my  unwearied  search  through  printed 
matter  old  and  new  for  ideas  that  make  for  the  bet- 
terment of  human  government,  I  know  that  no  ex- 
ternals, no  improvement  in  outer  condition  alone  can 
save  this  country,  or  any  other.  As  in  Mataquoit, 
so  it  is  the  whole  earth  over;  the  crying  blunder  of 
our  time  is  the  idea  that  civic  salvation  can  come 
wholly  from  without  by  act  of  Congress  or  decree 
of  Parliament,  whereas  it  is  not  the  laws  which 
are  so  much  at  fault  as  it  is  minds  and  souls.  No 
laws  can  produce  a  righteous  commonwealth;  it 
must  be  righteous  men.  It  is  not  because  our  Con- 
stitution is  bad  that  we  of  America  have  fallen 
short,  but  because  we  ourselves  have  been  unroused, 
self-centered,  inadequate.  Any  political  scheme  that 
will  permit  the  right  will  of  the  people  to  make  itself 
felt  is  good  enough  for  men  to  work  in  and  to  amend, 
good  enough  to  make  better,  if  they  have  patience 
enough  to  devote  themselves  to  its  betterment.  Our 
institutions  are  imperfect,  —  granted,  yet  they  are 
capable  of  endless  growth;  our  task  is  to  work 
steadily  and  to  contribute  all  that  is  within  us  to 
that  growth.  We  could  make  heaven  on  earth  under 
our  present  government  if  each  individual  were  the 
citizen  he  should  be,  forever  trying  to  shape  our  laws 
and  our  ideals  toward  finer  issues. 

It  is  character  that  we  need,  individual  character, 
and  with  this,  perhaps  the  finest  part  of  it,  more 
realization  than  in  the  old  days  of  every  man's 
responsibility  for  his  neighbor.  Our  forefathers' 
doctrine  was  good,  but  we  must  complement  and 
complete  it,  learning  how  to  live  more  generously, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  311 

acquiring  a  deeper  sense  of  the  share  our  brother 
man  holds  in  our  destiny.  We  must  find  the  right 
balance  between  the  two  tendencies  manifest  in  our 
past  growth;  if  youth  in  my  day  was  taught  too 
exclusively  to  bend  all  energy  to  the  cultivation  of 
virtue  in  himself,  the  salvation  of  his  own  soul, 
youth  to-day  is  taught  too  little  of  this.  A  reaction 
is  due  against  the  spirit  that,  in  a  world  of  such 
good  fellowship,  all  will  be  well,  that  heaven  will  be 
heaven  because  "the  gang's  all  there."  It  is  no  less 
true  now  than  of  old  that  heaven  must  be  earned; 
we  must  try  to  revive  belief  in  individual  conscience 
as  the  supreme  factor  in  life,  keeping  something 
from  this  period  of  collectivism,  a  consciousness  of 
sharing,  a  knowledge  of  human  lives  as  inextricably 
bound  together.  Our  supreme  need  now  is  a  counsel 
of  perfection  regarding  inner  excellence;  poet  or 
prophet  must  arise  to  tell  us  again  that  government 
is  an  affair  of  men's  souls;  that  no  outer  laws  can 
bring  freedom  or  civic  righteousness. 

"The  sensual  and  the  dark  rebel  in  vain 
Slaves  by  their  own  compulsion." 

From  the  dreams  of  recent  years  that  the  mil- 
lenium  will  be  here  when  we  have  perfected  the 
machinery  of  rule,  let  us  waken  to  the  fact  that 
omnipotence  itself  could  not  produce  a  government 
that  would  function  perfectly  without  the  right  kind 
of  men. 


December  3. 

I  rubbed  my  eyes  this  morning,  hardly  believing 
that  it  was  young  Jim  Lent  whom  I  saw.    A  year 


312  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

of  training  and  of  active  service  have  sent  this 
swaggering,  ruffianly  boy  home  a  self-respecting 
man.  Discharged  after  recovery  from  a  wound,  he 
is  back  in  Mataquoit;  the  way  in  which  he  holds 
his  shoulders,  the  way  in  which  he  walks  down  the 
street,  show  a  transformation  which  is  not  only  outer 
but  inner.  He  is  actually  planning  to  go  to  work 
for  his  long-suffering  mother. 

Frank  Ames,  our  rakish  young  cashier,  is  here 
also;  in  these,  and  in  a  few  others  who  have  drifted 
back,  one  notes  a  new  dignity,  an  air  of  having 
marched  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  their  fellows. 
War  is  a  hideous  evil,  but  training  for  war  does 
something  for  young  men  which  at  present  peace 
•doe*  not  do,  because  they  are  not  trained  for  peace. 
We  must  change  that.  Ancient  Sparta  had  her  limi- 
tations, but  ancient  Sparta  had  great  characteris- 
tics, chief  among  which  was  knowledge  of  what 
must  be  done  in  the  development  of  the  young.  I 
am  wholly  opposed  to  any  military  training  that 
would  direct  the  mind  to  future  wars,  but  when  we 
banish,  as  God  grant  war  may,  the  horror  of  fight- 
ing, may  we  not  keep,  for  the  achieving  of  peace, 
some  discipline  both  of  the  body  and  of  the  mind 
of  youth  that  will  make  both  body  and  mind  avail- 
able for  the  service  of  democracy?  The  Boy  Scout 
movement  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction ;  the  very 
wearing  of  a  uniform,  symbol  as  it  is  of  fraternal 
relationship,  has  educative  value,  turning  the  minds 
of  the  many  toward  unity  of  aim.  Not  only  our 
boys  but  our  young  men  also  should  be  gathered 
into  organizations  where  they  may  learn  obedience, 
order,  and  learn  that  there  i?  a  great  music  to  which 
-all  must  step  in  unison. 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  313 

December  7. 

As  I  become  more  intimate  with  Billions  I  find 
many  things  to  like  in  him,  and  I  deplore  the  snob- 
bishness of  my  boyhood,  as  I  deplore  such  snobbish- 
ness everywhere.  There  should  be  no  line  of  demar- 
cation drawn  by  wealth  or  family  in  any  American 
college;  such  sense  of  class  corrupts  American  de- 
mocracy in  that  which  should  be  its  place  of  nur- 
ture. Now  I  feel  a  kind  of  affectionate  regard  for 
Billions,  in  spite  of  my  disapproval  of  his  business 
methods,  and  we  have  many  pleasant  hours  to- 
gether. He  forgets  to  be  the  trust  magnate  and  be- 
comes the  raw  boy  again  as  we  go  over  old  days  on 
the  campus. 

Great  is  the  irony  of  life,  that,  out  of  all  that  col- 
lege class  of  seven  hundred  or  more,  Billions  in  his 
exile  of  magnificence  at  Round  Towers,  I  in  my 
exile  of  chosen  poverty  in  my  cobbler's  shop,  should 
relieve  each  other's  isolation  through  these  hard  days 
of  waiting.  We  chaff  each  other  constantly  about 
our  contrasting  solutions  of  the  problem  of  existence ; 
my  conviction  that  he  is  wholly  wrong  deepens, 
while  he  never  ceases  to  jibe  at  me  because  of  this 
occupation  of  mine,  which  puzzles  him  all  the  time, 
and  me  —  though  I  would  not  confess  this  to  Bil- 
lions—  part  of  the  time.  I  boldly  tell  him  that  he 
and  his  kind  are  as  extinct  as  megatherium  and 
ichthyosaurus,  and  other  vanished  captains  of  in- 
dustry that  sought  their  prey  in  an  earlier  world, 
and  have  left  us  only  their  bones  to  prove  their 
utter  extinction.  For  I  believe  that,  among  the 
things  that  have  passed  with  the  old  era  is  the  great 
financier  who  was  permitted  to  make  a  fortune  of 
unnumbered  millions  out  of  the  American  public; 


314  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

he  will  have  no  place  in  the  new  and  better  order 
that  will  come  when  peace  is  made.  I  believe  that 
we  shall  in  future  find  ways  to  end  this  appalling 
contrast  between  vast  riches  and  utter  destitution 
which  mocks  our  democratic  hope. 

Our  new  drastic  income  tax  is  at  least  a  step  in 
the  right  direction  of  wise  limitation  of  what  any 
one  citizen  may  own;  heavy  inheritance  taxes  will 
go  far  in  reforming  present  conditions,  as  will  the 
introduction  of  profit  sharing  in  business  enterprises. 

Billions  was  in  last  night,  and  we  disputed  ve- 
hemently for  two  hours,  after  I  had  told  him  that 
his  world,  in  which  his  boyhood's  dreams  of  extreme 
wealth  had  been  more  than  fulfilled,  had  come  to 
an  end,  and  a  new  order  was  beginning.  We  parted 
in  peace,  however. 

"Good  night,  Dodo,"  I  said,  not  that  I  really 
know  just  what  the  Dodo  is,  but  I  know  that  it  is 
extinct,  like  Billions. 

"Good  night,  you  silly  sentimentalist,"  he  an- 
swered, and  he  put  his  hand  affectionately  on  my 
shoulder.  "Lunatic,"  is,  however,  his  favorite  name 
for  me;  we  have  grown  fonder  of  each  other,  since 
we  began  to  call  each  other  names.  Ever  since  I 
made  the  acquaintance  of  his  old  mother,  I  have 
been  discovering  a  fine  creature  in  Billions,  who 
never  had  a  chance  for  full  development.  Much  of 
the  theorizing  I  have  been  doing  in  regard  to  the 
government  of  our  country  in  future  amounts  in 
effect  to  this:  I  should  like  to  see  it  such  that  Bil- 
lions, the  multimillionaire,  shall  in  future  be  nipped 
in  the  bud  in  order  that  Billions,  the  man,  shall  have 
a  chance. 

Sad  thoughts  knock  at  the  door  of  my  heart  dur- 


A   WORLD    TO   MEND  315 

ing  these  meetings,  rousing  within  me  misgivings 
regarding  the  very  character  of  our  freedom.  Bil- 
lions and  I  have  both  made  full  use  of  our  liberty, 
but  a  sad  failure  of  equality  and  fraternity.  He  has 
exploited  his  neighbor ;  I  have  let  mine  alone ;  which 
is  more  guilty?  Translated  into  concrete  terms,  one 
of  my  puzzles,  as  I  cobble,  is  how  in  the  coming 
democracy  to  prevent  Billions  Brown,  how  to  pre- 
vent myself.  We  ought  to  be  made  impossible,  even  if 
it  takes  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  to  do  it. 

Not  only  with  reference  to  us,  the  guilty  twain, 
but  with  reference  to  our  countrymen  at  large  I 
ask  again,  as  I  have  often  asked,  with  the  thought 
of  our  future  development  in  mind:  What  have  we 
done  with  our  one  hundred  and  forty  years  of  lib- 
erty, equality,  fraternity?  Who  can  deny  that  we 
have,  at  least  in  those  aspects  of  life  which  are  most 
manifest,  greatly  failed?  Those  reproaches  of  war 
time  against  our  practice  are  quite  as  valid  in  time 
of  peace ;  unabashed  luxury,  unrelieved  poverty  con- 
vict us;  the  loot  of  great  fortunes,  the  city  palaces 
and  shore  palaces,  the  city  slums,  tell  a  long  story  of 
failing  patriotism. 

With  the  overwhelming  inrush  of  desire  and 
appetite  after  months  of  abstinence,  those  tokens  of 
our  long  national  shame,  —  the  flaunting  expendi- 
ture of  the  many,  the  priceless  jewels,  the  rich  gar- 
ments, the  evidences  of  life  given  over  to  automo- 
biling  and  dancing,  to  vaudeville,  revues,  and  mere 
pleasuring;  will  probably  be  more  than  ever  in  evi- 
dence, making  one  wonder  if  our  brief  moment  of 
greatness  must  wholly  vanish.  If,  in  earlier  years, 
as  in  this  past  year,  the  privileged  in  wealth,  tradi- 
tion, birth,  had  lived  up  to  their  individual  duties, 


316  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

their  opportunities  of  sharing  and  of  helping,  we 
should  not  now  be  facing  this  moment,  wherein  the 
moving  finger  writes  upon  the  wall:  America,  this 
grandeur  of  opportunity  unused;  America,  this  tre- 
mendous responsibility  not  realized,  will  end  in  ruin, 
desolation,  utter  failure,  if  her  citizens  go  back  to 
the  old  selfish  way. 

Is  our  failure  so  great  that  all  should  be  lost? 
This  citizenship,  which  we  have  failed  to  justify,  — 
should  it  be  taken  from  us?  It  is  pity  unspeakable 
if  we  must  forfeit  this  one  chance  in  the  history  of 
all  ages  for  the  full  development  of  the  individual 
in  freedom,  for  that  hope  toward  which  nature's 
utmost  aim  would  seem  to  point.  Yet,  unless  we 
can  make  in  future  better  use  of  our  liberty  than  we 
have  in  the  past,  should  we  not  forfeit  it?  No  man 
who  neglects  duty  as  we  and  ours  have  done,  no  man 
who  uses  his  power  of  individual  achievement  for 
purposes  of  exploiting  his  fellows,  has  a  right  to 
citizenship.  If  fraternity,  from  free  choice,  is  be- 
yond us,  must  we  not  be  coerced  into  fraternity? 
Perhaps  we  have  deserved  this,  sinning  greatly  in 
selfishness,  but  if  this  prove  necessary,  we  are  driven 
centuries  back  in  our  development.  Shall  we  sink 
to  some  collectivist  system,  inevitably  falling  to  a 
lower  level,  giving  our  lives,  our  consciences  into  the 
keeping  of  the  state,  where  the  glory  of  free  choice, 
free  action,  of  the  finer  will  shall  be  gone ;  shall  we 
strike  out  liberty,  placing  ourselves  where  we  shall 
have  no  choice  in  the  matter  of  showing  generosity  to 
our  neighbor ;  or  shall  we  claim,  with  awful  sense  of 
responsibility,  the  freedom  of  the  individual  for 
which  our  forefathers  fought,  and  live  up  to  it  as  we 
have  never  done?  The  alternative  is  plain ;  either  a 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  317 

collectivism  crushing  individual  endeavor,  or  a  new 
and  disinterested  individualism. 

The  wheel  of  destiny  is  turning;  the  social  revo- 
lution is  upon  us;  by  the  law  of  retribution  it  is 
bound  to  come,  unless  our  life  change.  It  is  for  us 
to  make  sure  that  the  social  revolution  come  not 
through  red  uprising,  but  in  the  minds  and  souls  of 
American  citizens,  especially  those  who  have  in- 
herited privileges  of  long  standing,  and  that  it  come 
before  it  is  too  late.  We  must  win  the  distinction 
of  being  citizens  in  that  republic  where  the  disin- 
terested soul  of  man  lives  by  choice  at  peace  with  his 
neighbor.  The  burden  of  our  individuality  is  upon 
us;  we  are  responsible  for  its  utmost  reach;  its 
utmost  reach  is  the  voluntary  surrender  of  selfish 
aim. 

Have  the  one  hundred  and  forty  years  brought  us 
enough  of  insight  to  correct  our  mistakes,  enough  of 
conscience  to  help  us  repair  our  sins  of  omission? 
I  confess  to  a  longing  for  one  more  chance  for  the 
American  citizen,  for  one  hundred  and  ten  millions 
of  American  citizens,  just  one  more  chance  to  grow 
into  an  unselfish  unity  of  purpose.  Our  forefathers' 
hope  must  not  be  proved  too  high  a  hope  for  us; 
we  must  not  let  the  supreme  gift  of  individual  lib- 
erty be  taken  from  us  but  turn 

"and  thank  God,  hastening, 
That  the  same  goal  is  still  on  the  same  track." 

December  10. 

In  my  post-office  box  this  noon,  under  much  mis- 
cellaneous printed  matter,  I  found  a  letter,  an  un- 
wontedly  plump  letter,  in  a  thin,  crisscrossed  foreign 


318  A   WORLD    TO   MEND 

envelope  with  a  French  stamp.  Divining  in  it  sig- 
nificances that  would  make  it  impossible  for  me  to 
read  it  as  I  sometimes  read  letters,  strolling  home 
through  the  main  street  of  Mataquoit,  I  waited  until 
I  was  again  in  my  shop,  with  the  door  securely 
closed  and  opened  it  with  a  sense  of  pleasurable 
anticipation. 

There  was  a  long  epistle  from  Katharine, 
enclosing  a  brief  note  from  Jack;  the  two  had 
then  met  for  the  first  time  since  they  went  to  France ; 
Katharine  had  willed  that  they  should  not  see  each 
other.  She  is  thoroughgoing,  Katharine,  in  her  de- 
votions, and  had  determined  that  nothing,  even  for 
an  hour,  should  take  her  mind  from  her  work. 

Yes,  they  had  encountered  each  other  quite  ac- 
cidentally on  an  October  Sunday  afternoon.  Jack, 
on  leave  for  a  week,  and  en  route  for  Paris,  whence 
he  was  starting  for  the  Riviera,  was  spending  a  day 
exploring  the  devastated  region  back  of  Chateau- 
Thierry.  Strolling  through  a  ruined  village,  he  had 
come  upon  Katharine,  sitting  on  the  threshold  of 
what  once  had  been  a  home,  now  splintered  into 
minute  fragments.  Katharine's  afternoon  was  free, 
and  she  had  walked  two  kilometers  out  to  this  spot 
where  she  was  building  a  home  for  the  old  woman 
and  her  goose.  Jack  found  her  looking  at  the  newly 
laid  foundation  stones. 

In  all  the  shattered  village  where  houses  and 
church  together  had  crumbled  into  sand  there  was 
no  living  thing;  no  blade  of  grass,  no  leaf;  only 
splintered  trunks  of  trees,  and  here  and  there  a 
broken  wall  of  a  house,  standing  shell-like,  with 
gaping  holes;  only  heaps  of  crushed  stone  and  tile 
and  plaster,  and  a  rough  outline  of  transept  and 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  319 

nave  where  the  church  had  been.     Here  was  no 
man,  woman,  nor  child,  no  chicken,  dog,  nor  pig; 

"And  no  birds  sang." 

iNow  the  full  details  of  that  meeting  I  shall  never 
know;  but  the  result  I  was  told  and  asked  to  act 
upon.  Katharine  had  decided  at  last,  she  told  me; 
and  would  I  please  see  her  father  and  act  as  inter- 
mediary? Relations  (by  letter)  had  of  late  been 
so  satisfactory  between  them  that  she  hated  to 
disturb  them;  perhaps,  if  I  break  the  news  to  him, 
the  blow  would  be  softened;  I  could  wheedle  him 
in  anything.  Would  I  please  try  to  get  his  consent 
to  her  marrying  Jack? 

"You  don't  know  how  much  respect  he  has  for 
you,"  said  Katharine,  the  flatterer. 

Jack's  note  was  brief  and  not  wholly  legible,  for 
he  wrote  with  a  broken  pencil  on  a  rough  bit  of 
paper  from  a  notebook.  He  would  not  teH  me 
what  I  had  always  known  without  telling,  but  he 
seconded  the  request  for  intervention. 

"Asking  you  to  do  this  may  seem  queer  action 
for  a  man  and  a  soldier,  but  I  am  not  afraid  of 
him;  I  am  only  afraid  for  Katharine.  You  have 
no  idea  how  she  cares  for  her  father." 

"I'll  tell  Billions  that  first,"  I  said  to  Tim,  who 
was  looking  very  happy  over  the  news,  which  he 
seemed  to  understand. 

"I  don't  want  to  make  trouble,"  said  Jack,  "but 
this  thing  between  Katharine  and  me  has  got  to  be. 
You  are  the  only  strategist  who  can  plan  out  a  win- 
ning campaign." 

So  I  am  to  interview  Billions!  Mine  the  boiling 
oil,  if  boiling  there  must  be;  mine  the  oubliette. 


320  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

So  be  it ;  I'd  rather  be  the  victim  of  other  people's 
lives  than  not  to  be  in  life  at  all.  As  Jack  would 
say:  "Here  goes." 

As  I  prepare  for  my  task,  an  undercurrent  of 
glad  feeling  is  strong  within  me  which  will  perhaps 
be  a  potent  factor  in  winning  my  case.  It  is  the 
thought  of  those  two,  my  two,  in  their  service  uni- 
forms, Jack's  probably  not  over-clean,  pledging  their 
faith,  in  the  dust  and  ashes  of  that  ruined  village: 
a  symbol  of  their  young  country,  lending  her 
strength,  her  youth,  to  rebuild  among  the  ruins  of 
a  world;  a  symbol  of  the  days  to  be,  of  life  and 
love,  with  their  feet  on  death.  The  future  is  safe, 
beyond  shot  and  shell,  safe  in  the  hearts  of  the 
young. 

December  11. 

I  broke  the  hews  to  Billions.  His  first  remark 
was  not  unexpected;  from  the  way  in  which  he 
said  it  I  could  see  that  he  had  rehearsed  it  many 
times,  in  expectation  of  the  inevitable  moment. 

'"I'll  disinherit  her,"  said  Billions  quite  like  an 
angry  father  in  a  play. 

"That's  a  rather  good  idea,"  I  told  him.  "I  do 
not  want  to  say  anything  that  will  hurt  you,  but 
I  doubt  if  you  could  do  anything  that  would  please 
Katharine  more ;  she  worries  a  great  deal  about  your 
having  so  much  money,  Billions." 

December  12. 

The  silence  over  the  battlefields  is  heard  as  dis- 
tinctly here  as  there;  in  the  merciful  breathing 
space,  one  may  pause  to  think,  and  perhaps  may 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  321 

think  more  clearly  than  at  any  time  during  the 
past  four  years  and  more.  Looking  back,  I  can 
see  how  greatly  the  war  has  done  that  which  I, 
meditating  on  ideals  for  days  of  peace,  have  longed 
for,  as  something  great  beyond  possibility;  that 
sense  of  need  of  my  early  days  in  Mataquoit  has 
been  swept  into  answer  to  the  need.  To  an  extent 
I  should  hardly  have  dared  hope,  it  has,  for  a  time 
at  least,  wakened  the  rich  man  out  of  his  luxurious 
content,  the  scholar  from  his  minute  problem,  the 
artist  from  his  separate  dream,  the  lover  from  the 
selfishness  of  his  desire,  woman  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  her  clothes,  —  even  from  a  selfish  maternity ; 
the  father  from  hope  of  his  son's  commercial  success 
as  the  supreme  aim  of  existence. 

The  young  have  grown  up  under  it,  bending  the 
whole  of  their  ambition  and  effort  to  meet  the  great 
challenge.  Youth  becomes  sublime,  as  it  has  never 
been  before,  under  the  effort.  The  old  have  grown 
young  under  it,  with  passionate  desire  yet  to  make 
good.  They  who  have  never  served  have  here 
learned  to  serve ;  they  who  had  known  no  ami  have 
found  an  aim  for  effort.  Our  nation  is  awake  to 
spiritual  issues,  as,  a  few  years  ago,  I  should  not 
have  believed  possible,  through  this  trial  by  fire, 
whereby  we  are  made  tragically  one. 

No  man  can  think  out  fully  the  meaning  of  this 
great  and  terrible  thing  which  came  to  pass;  no 
man  can  stop  trying  to  think  it  out.  I  am  no 
militarist;  God  knows  I  would  gladly  have  laid 
down  my  life  to  avert  this  war,  as  would  thousands 
of  men  and  women,  could  the  opportunity  have 
been  given  them  in  August,  1914. 

But  I  have  faith  in  experience,  in  man's  supreme 


322  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

duty  to  face  that  which  comes,  and  find  the  meaning 
in  it;  the  one  unpardonable  sin  in  life  is  wasting 
experience,  failing  to  see  and  grasp,  while  it  is  quick, 
the  opportunity  given  by  struggle,  by  suffering,  for 
insight  into  the  inner  meaning  of  life;  failing  to 
try  to  shape  the  trial  of  the  moment  toward  the 
highest  ends.  Though  this  attitude  may  betoken 
little  as  regards  theology,  it  shows  much  of  faith. 
We  must  not  stand  passive,  questioning  what  the 
great  tragedy  means;  we  must  make  it  mean  the 
best.  We  did  not  seek  this  anguish ;  it  found  us,  con- 
fronting us  with  a  great  moment  when  we  were 
compelled  to  rise  and  help,  or  go  forever  shamed; 
now  we  have  an  account  to  render,  in  that  we  have 
gone  down  into  that  ancient  hell  of  slaughter.  It 
is  for  us  to  make  the  mighty  struggle  tell  upon  our 
future,  divining  what  we  can  of  its  deeper  purposes 
and  helping  carry  them  out  in  our  regenerated  wills, 
purposing  better  things  for  the  future  because  of 
the  tragedy  of  the  past.  We  must  make  this,  spirit- 
ually, a  step  onward;  as  with  any  agony,  we  must 
wrest  from  it  its  deepest  significance. 

If,  from  out  the  remotest  past,  from  mud  and 
slime,  a  monster  has  arisen,  threatening  all  that 
humanity  has  gained  in  its  struggle  upward,  swift 
and  splendid  have  sprung  to  meet  it,  love,  sacrifice, 
devotion  such  as  the  children  of  men  have  never 
dreamed.  Dragon  fang  and  archangel's  sword  have 
met  in  our  time;  would  the  angel  have  risen  so 
quickly  had  the  dragon  not  stirred  in  the  ooze? 
What  is  there  for  us  but  to  wrestle  with  the  angel 
and  hold  him  fast,  to  seize  and  keep  the  greatness 
that  our  hour  of  anguish  has  brought,  to  try  to  carry 
into  the  future  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  of  these  last 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  323 

months?  If  we  let  the  surging,  noble  emotion  of  our 
days  of  service  ebb  back  along  the  sand,  if  we  forget 
our  high  endeavor,  we  shall  be  greatly  guilty.  This 
crisis  has  pointed  the  way  to  unity  of  disinterested 
service,  has  shown  us  undreamed  possibilities  in 
ourselves.  Our  problem  therefore  is  to  find  how 
certain  qualities  in  human  nature,  manifest  in  times 
of  great  trouble,  of  utmost  stress,  can  be  held,  quick 
and  alive,  for  the  country's  service  in  time  of  quiet. 
How  can  we  make  permanent  the  mood  of  sacrifice? 
How  keep  aroused,  when  no  danger  threatens,  this 
self-forgetfulness,  this  willingness  to  help  in  the 
life  of  the  country,  as  if  the  whole  conduct  of  affairs 
rested  on  each  man's  back?  Man  must  learn  to 
stand  by  man  in  days  of  calm  as  in  days  of  tumult; 
this  is  what  we  need,  —  the  heroic  mood  for 
common  days. 

If  we  have  found  then,  in  that  great  crisis,  war, 
just  those  virtues  needed  in  the  greater  crisis,  peace, 
we  must  not  let  them  go.  Gone  are  those  terrible 
but  simple  fighting  days  of  summer;  we  face  per- 
plexing days  of  autumn,  of  whiter,  with  a  world's 
work  to  do.  Then  it  was  only:  Stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder;  do  not  let  the  weak  fall  by  the  hand  of 
the  assassin;  now  the  question  is:  Who  is  my 
brother?  How  shall  I  treat  him?  How  shall  men 
rebuild  this  shattered  house  of  life  so  that  it  will 
not  again  crumble  about  their  ears? 

A  nation,  one  as  we  were  one  in  the  awful  hour 
of  making  ready  to  go  to  the  rescue  of  mankind,  as 
eager  to  help  as  we  were  then,  could  mark  out  a 
path  higher  than  any  nation  has  ever  yet  taken, 
could  achieve  an  unexampled  destiny.  If  our  vast 
material  resources  could  be  matched  by  spiritual 


324  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

aspiration  as  great,  what  limit  could  there  be  to 
our  development  at  home  or  to  our  power  abroad 
in  helping  work  out  concord  among  men? 

December  15. 

Coming  home  by  the  shore  path  this  afternoon 
I  saw  Billions  Brown  out  on  the  headland,  standing 
in  relief  against  the  sky.  Poor  Billions,  he  does  not 
yet  know  that  he  has  passed  away!  I  see  no  place 
for  him  in  the  world  of  the  future  or  for  his  kind, 
save  perchance  those  few  leaders  of  enterprise  great 
enough  to  turn  from  the  race  for  individual  wealth 
and  power  and  lend  their  energies  to  the  building 
up  of  the  country. 

Billions  and  I  are  together  now  several  evenings 
in  the  week,  sitting  by  the  open  fire  in  his  library, 
or  in  my  shop,  where  sweet-smelling  pitch  pine 
lends  a  fragrance  to  our  discussions.  Secretly  I 
think  he  likes  my  shop  best,  though  he  still  looks 
sadly  out  of  place,  in  all  his  tailored  glossiness, 
among  my  odds  and  ends  of  leather.  Sometimes 
he  picks  a  book  from  one  of  my  shelves,  reads  it 
a  little  and  scowls;  it  would  almost  seem  as  if  the 
greater  part  of  my  library  is  such  as  to  offend  him. 
He  was  silent  last  night  for  an  hour  over  a  chapter 
in  an  economic  treatise  on  profit-sharing,  but  he 
said  nothing  about  it,  nor  did  I,  though  I  had  assid- 
uously trained  that  volume  to  open  in  that  place 
for  his  benefit.  He  has  not  told  me  why  he  stays 
on  so  late  in  Mataquoit;  I  divine  a  need  of  com- 
panionship, something  of  that  subtle  loneliness 
which  has  been  stronger  in  us  all  since  the  world 
crash  came. 

Sometimes  I  think  we  make  a  symbolic  picture, 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  325 

he  and  I,  Capital  and  Labor,  conversing  amiably,  — 
propitious,  I  hope,  for  the  future. 

Billions  scoffs  at  my  ideas,  yet  he  will  not  let 
them  alone;  he  comes  back  again  and  again  to  the 
old  questions,  provoking  me  to  utterance.  Never, 
in  spite  of  drastic  admonition,  will  he  admit  the 
error  of  his  financial  ways,  yet  I  do  not  wholly  de- 
spair of  right  citizenship  in  Billions  even  yet.  There 
are  momentary  flashes  of  wistful  doubt  in  his  face, 
where  there  used  to  be  but  a  Bismarckian  aggres- 
sive certainty.  He  is  giving  away  huge  sums  of 
money  in  charities  at  home  and  in  war  relief  work 
abroad;  those  purse  strings,  once  loosened,  have 
never  been  tied  again.  He  makes  vast  and  gloomy 
schemes  for  philanthropic  disposal  of  more  and 
more  of  his  wealth. 

Wallace  joins  us  sometimes,  but  he  has  little  time 
for  discussion  of  theories  of  right  action;  he  is  too 
busy  with  action  itself.  They  make  an  interesting 
and  suggestive  contrast  as  they  talk  together,  as 
they  do  with  eagerness,  for  they  have  grown  to  be 
great  friends:  Billions,  in  his  newly-wakened  gen- 
erosity, giving  away  his  millions;  Wallace,  as  has 
been  his  lifelong  habit,  giving  his  very  soul.  It 
takes  no  diviner  to  tell  which  coin  is  of  the  precious 
metal  most  needed  in  our  national  treasury  of  the 
future. 

Sometimes,  through  wreaths  of  smoke,  my 
thought  of  the  democracy  to  be  takes  on  the  faces 
of  tue  people  I  have  known  here.  Wallace,  of 
course,  is  in  the  new  period,  less  changed  than  any 
one  else,  doing  what  he  has  always  done. 

Jack  is  the  chief  figure  in  it,  the  world  open  for 
his  energy,  his  friendly  cooperation.  I  have  ceased 


326  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

trembling  for  his  scholarship;  he  is  graduating  in 
a  world  of  men  and  of  affairs;  the  ideas  that  he 
needs  do  not  come  from  books. 

Katharine  is  there,  unwearied  in  serving,  every 
power,  gift,  talent  dedicated  to  her  kind;  her  hands 
and  Clare's  are  channels  through  which  Billions' 
great  wealth  will  flow  into  the  life  of  the  country, 
relieving  distress,  starting  new  enterprises  for  the 
development  of  the  young. 

With  them  I  catch  glimpses  of  many  of  the  youth 
of  Mataquoit,  their  self-consciousness  lost,  self-in- 
terest merged  in  something  greater,  finding  and 
keeping  the  pace  of  the  new  era,  the  old  slouch 
gone.  Some  of  the  middle-aged  catch  the  pace  also : 
all  the  world  is  doing  its  domestic,  its  civic,  the 
entire  range  of  its  human  duties  as  faithfully  as 
Grandmother  Brown  has  done  hers,  —  but  no!  that 
would  be  the  millennium,  and  the  millennium  is  not 
yet. 

December  18. 

Some  of  these  days  of  waiting  are  days  of  de- 
pression, when  my  courage  wavers,  and  I  have  a 
fear  that  we  may  be  going  back  to  the  old,  ignoble 
content  of  the  pre-war  days.  Am  I  right  or  wrong 
in  foreboding  a  certain  relaxation  of  effort  every- 
where, in  detecting  already  a  subtle  atmosphere  of 
letting  go?  I  miss  the  great  endeavor  toward  the 
utmost,  the  ultimate  striving  of  the  last  hard 
months;  is  the  passionate  oneness  of  purpose  of 
the  fighting  days  threatened?  Will  nothing  but 
danger,  anxiety,  anguish  unite  human  kind?  Where 
can  we  find  a  battle  hymn  that  will  thrill  the  souls 
of  men  to  generous  unity  of  action  in  time  of  pros- 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  327 

perity  as  in  time  of  adversity?  How  can  the  heroic 
instinct  be  fostered,  trained,  and  urged  to  utmost 
effort  in  days  when  there  is  no  war? 

December  20. 

To-day  came  the  longest  letter  I  have  ever  had 
from  Jack,  written  from  the  Riviera,  where  he  is 
getting  a  few  days  of  sorely  needed  rest. 

"It's  great  down  here,"  he  writes,  so  dismissing  the 
scenery.  "Now  that  I've  got  a  bit  of  time  I  thought 
I'd  tell  you  that  I've  doped  out  at  last  what  I'm 
going  to  be.  Engineer.  Civil.  Bridges.  The  no- 
tion came  to  me  weeks  back,  oddly  enough,  one  day 
when  we  were  having  a  hot  time  of  it.  I  was  lead- 
ing my  men  over  a  bridge  across,  —  well,  I  can't 
spell  it  and  I  can't  pronounce  it,  but  it's  a  branch 
of  the  Marne.  Things  were  pretty  lively,  and  some- 
thing—  I  thought  at  first  it  was  the  day  of  judg- 
ment—  struck  the  bridge  right  in  the  middle,  and 
we  had  to  swim  for  it.  We  did,  too,  and  nobody 
was  hurt  worth  mentioning,  and  we  crawled  up  on 
the  bank  and  went  for  them,  good  and  plenty. 

Well,  I  got  my  idea  of  my  career-to-be  between 
the  time  I  left  the  bridge  and  the  time  I  struck  the 
water.  You  know  how  they  say  when  you  are 
drowning  you  see  your  whole  past  life  in  an  in- 
stant; the  difference  was,  I  saw  my  whole  future 
life.  And  then  I  didn't  mean  to  drown,  —  not 
muchly. 

I'm  going  to  do  construction  work,  build  things 
that  will  last  and  will  be  a  permanent  part  of  the 
life  of  the  country.  I  never  could  get  used  to  the 
idea  of  buying  things  and  selling  'em  again,  —  I 
hope  Dad  won't  mind  too  much.  When  I  strike 
that  burg  where  they  are  trying  to  educate  me  I'm 


328  A   WORLD   TO   MEND 

going  to  hustle.  I'll  take  the  courses  that  will  fit 
best  into  my  scheme,  —  I  dare  say  I  shan't  be  so 
book-shy,  now  that  I  know  what  practical  thing 
I'm  going  to  do  afterward.  I've  always  been  on  the 
defensive,  afraid  they'd  make  a  highbrow  of  me. 
As  I'm  sure  at  last  that  they  haven't  a  ghost  of  a 
chance,  I'll  go  to  it,  hot  and  heavy. 

And  I've  got  a  hunch  that  along  with  my  own 
job,  I'd  better  do  a  bit  of  another  kind  of  construc- 
tion work ;  lots  of  fellows  have  got  it.  You'd  better 
believe  that  we  know  what  we  are  fighting  for  over 
here,  and  the  idea  has  dawned  on  us  that  we've 
got  to  go  on  with  our  job  for  the  rest  of  our  lives 
at  home.  It's  taken  a  lot  of  powder  and  shot  to 
get  it  into  some  of  our  heads,  but  we've  got  a  clearer 
notion  than  we  used  to  have  of  what  the  show  is 
run  for  over  there,  America,  I  mean.  We've  made 
a  compact  among  us  that  we  are  going  to  whirl  in 
and  get  a  whack  at  the  immigrants.  Teach  'em 
English.  Whip  'em  into  line.  Teach  'em  games. 
Trouble  with  these  Germans  is  that  they  don't  un- 
derstand games;  no  idea  of  fair  play.  That's  the 
place  to  begin,  —  there's  nothing,  really,  so  civil- 
izing as  games.  There's  a  lot  to  be  done  with  all 
those  fellows  that  keep  tumbling  in  on  us  to  make 
'em  find  out  what  self-government  means  and 
learn  to  keep  step." 

Every  statement  in  this  letter  has  my  joyous  ap- 
proval; the  boy  sees  at  last.  But  heaven  help  the 
immigrants  if  Jack  teaches  them  the  kind  of  Eng- 
lish he  uses! 

December  22. 

Report  has  it  that  our  armies  will  soon  be  sailing 
back,  and  that  demobilization  will  go  on  rapidly 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  329 

once  they  are  here.  Of  Katharine's  plans  I  have 
heard  nothing  further,  but  doubtless  not  many 
weeks  will  pass  before  my  two  will  come  home 
again,  come  home,  I  trust,  to  happiness,  and  to 
something  greater  than  mere  personal  happiness,  to 
citizenship  for  themselves  and  for  their  children  in 
a  land  of  enlarging  freedom.  There  is  that  in  the 
lives  and  experience  of  Jack  and  of  Katharine  which 
sanctifies  the  threshold  of  the  home  yet  to  be.  It 
is  not  only  for  myself  and  for  others  who  love  them 
that  I  long  to  have  them  here  again,  safe.  All 
my  unlived  life,  my  sense  of  lost  opportunity  rises 
in  strong  desire  within  me  to  aid  in  the  work  which 
service  in  this  war  has  begun,  to  help  them  find 
their  place,  know  the  greater  and  better  America, 
and  aid  in  shaping  her  destiny. 

My  deepest  misgiving  as  well  as  my  strongest 
hope  lingers  about  them  and  their  kind.  They  who 
went  gladly  overseas  to  the  conflict,  —  will  they 
come  back  with  lessened  light  upon  their  faces? 
Are  they  again  to  know  days  as  great?  They  have 
ministered  to  the  ill,  to  the  dying;  they  have  suf- 
fered anguish  with  their  fellows  in  the  shell-smitten 
trenches;  will  they  be  able  to  minister  to  the  com- 
monplace; to  those  whose  souls  are  dying,  choked 
with  too  much  of  earth  and  its  riches;  to  those 
resting  inert  on  old  privilege,  not  earned,  claiming 
immunity  from  struggle  and  making  no  return? 
Will  the  inspiration  of  their  service  in  the  face  of 
death  last  in  the  face  of  the  multitudinous  difficulties 
and  discouragements  of  life? 

That  old  haunting  inquiry  will  not  down,  as  to 
whether  they  will  return  to  a  nation  permanently 
wakened  to  higher  aim,  more  greatly  one  than  ever 


330  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

before,  or  merely  to  a  nation  more  prosperous  than 
it  has  ever  been,  as  the  papers  predict,  and  con- 
stantly growing  richer,  with  its  merchant  marine 
and  its  increasing  trade  all  over  the  world,  where 
others  have  let  go? 

I  sadden  at  the  prospect  of  an  enlarging  material 
life,  where  we  profoundly  need  an  enlarging  spirit- 
ual and  intellectual  life.  We  greatly  need  suffer- 
ing, misfortune,  discipline;  have  we  suffered 
enough? 

Nations  victorious  in  arms  are  not  always  those 
which  have  gained  a  real  victory;  defeat  of  subtler 
kind  lurks  often,  I  dare  not  think  inevitably,  in 
success  on  the  battlefield.  The  German  triumph 
of  1871  was,  in  reality,  a  great  German  defeat; 
wars  should  be  banished  if  only  for  the  mischief 
they  do  to  the  victor  nation.  Sad  thoughts  arise; 
there  is  menace  in  our  loudly  celebrated  victory  of 
to-day.  If  outer  gain  be  inner  loss,  what  lies  ahead 
of  us,  who  have  won  so  easily? 

Our  best  hope  rests  with  those  who  have  suffered, 
have  seen  and  shared  unspeakable  things,  and  have 
tried  to  help.  They  who  have  made  the  great  sacri- 
fice, whose  sympathy  has  been  proved  good  in  deed, 
this  dedicated  generation  will  carry  over  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  country  an  influence  profound; 
here  is  a  leaven  that  will  work.  Our  nation  will  be 
what  they  try  to  make  it;  not  without  hope  I  wait 
those  who  come,  with  faces  shining,  from  the  east; 
the  splendor  of  our  young  half  blinds  my  eyes: 

"I  see  them  walking  in  an  air  of  glory 
Whose  light  doth  trample  on  my  days." 


A   WORLD   TO   MEND  331 

In  these  who  have  learned  by  serving  we  shall 
find  the  one  thing  that  we  need,  leadership.  The 
vision  of  the  new  democracy,  the  necessity  of 
brotherhood  among  men  come  to  them  concretely, 
through  descent  into  that  hell  of  war  suffering  to 
which  misunderstanding  leads.  They  have  seen  the 
greater  issue,  and  they  will  not  forget,  nor  will  they 
suffer  the  hard  impulsion  of  slaying  their  kind  to 
come  again  upon  them. 

What  may  not  be,  with  their  broader  outlook  and 
their  profounder  sympathy,  when  they  come  home, 
aware  of  America's  responsibilities  to  all  her 
citizens,  but  also  to  the  world,  having  learned  the 
deeper  needs  of  mankind,  —  harmony  at  home  and 
abroad,  fraternity  the  world  over,  friendly  relations 
in  difference,  a  right  internationalism !  Through 
their  high  service  rendered,  through  their  insight 
into  the  pitfalls  which  beset  the  footsteps  of  man- 
kind, they  will  lead  us  forward  safely;  they  will 
carry  on  the  best  of  our  old  traditions  but  with 
something  new  and  great  added,  resolved  to  make 
democracy  come  true,  not  only  for  ourselves  but 
for  others,  not  blown  about  by  whiffs  of  unpractical 
theory,  not  Anarchists,  not  extremists  of  any  kind, 
not  Bolshevists,  not  snobs,  but  Americans,  citizens 
of  a  great  republic  whose  foundations  are  the  souls 
of  men. 

Dimly,  shining  through  the  picture  of  what  we 
are,  I  begin  to  have  a  vision  of  what  we  may  be; 
the  great  events,  the  questions  roused  by  them, 
pierce  through  modern  habit  and  training  to  a  some- 
thing mystical  within  me,  — a  tendency  which  I 
have  kept  out  of  sight,  and  of  which  I  have  been 
somewhat  ashamed.  Yet  one  need  not  feel  apolo- 


332  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

getic  for  holding  in  one's  greater  moments  faith  for 
which  one  can  not  present  full  reasoned  proof ;  could 
one  present  such  proof,  it  were  not  faith.  My  vision 
of  the  future  America  is  built  on  Faith,  Hope  — 
and  Charity ;  a  vast  deal  of  Charity. 

I  see  a  great  nation,  redeemed  by  suffering, 
brought  through  sorrow  and  through  hard  endeavor 
from  paths  wherein  it  had  gone  astray,  face  to  face 
with  the  profoundest  duty  of  humanity.  Sacrifice  has 
ever  been  the  way  of  faith ;  crude,  primitive,  cruel  in 
early  days,  it  still  contains  essential  truth,  the  need 
of  human  nature  to  suffer,  to  give  up.  We,  who 
have  offered  on  the  altar  of  the  nations  our  dearest 
and  best,  know  that  the  flame  of  our  faith  rises 
higher  than  ever  before,  shining  on  the  path  of  the 
future.  Through  our  great  choice  has  come  a  higher 
ideal;  a  deeper  sense  of  responsibility,  a  more  pro- 
found disinterestedness.  Purposes  never  fully  real- 
ized even  in  America,  or  but  dimly  remembered, 
write  themselves  plainly  across  the  stars. 

So,  in  solemn  vision,  America  moves  on  to  un- 
dreamed greatness,  with  all  her  incoming  races  be- 
coming one  in  aim  and  in  endeavor.  All  classes,  all 
honorable  occupations  are  fairly  represented,  all 
voices  of  her  many  citizens  are  heard.  She  finds  a 
way  to  use  even  the  wrath  of  her  disgruntled  chil- 
dren, her  manifold  sons  and  daughters,  gathered 
from  many  lands,  letting  it  spur  her  to  finer  justice, 
so  that  their  anger  against  her  becomes  part  of  her 
power,  as  she  sifts  out  and  uses  what  they  bring  her 
of  real  suggestion,  and  throws  away  the  threats  and 
the  curses.  The  principle  upon  which  our  govern- 
ment rests,  the  principle  for  which  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  has  fought  throughout  history,  belief  in  lib- 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  333 

erty,  secured  by  institutions  growing  more  and  more 
free,  is  driven  home,  in  part  by  this  great  con- 
flict, to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  half-developed 
peoples,  who  would,  perhaps,  in  an  age  of  calm, 
have  gained  no  clear  knowledge  of  it,  driven  home  in 
all  our  preparations,  in  our  actual  struggle.  Its 
watchword  is  fair  play ;  in  peace,  as  in  war,  we  fight 
for  fair  play  and  for  the  safeguarding  of  those  old 
and  precious  things  of  life,  —  our  faith,  and  the  in- 
tegrity of  home  and  family. 

Thus  this  country  of  outer  greatness  becomes  the 
country  of  inner  greatness,  taking  up  into  her  high 
purpose  all  the  hope  and  the  achievement  of  those 
who  have  served  her  at  this  crisis  to  add  to  earlier 
hope  and  achievement.  All  among  our  many  mil- 
lions, who  have  forgotten,  in  differences  of  opinion, 
class,  occupation,  our  deep  political  creed  of  many 
in  one,  again  remember.  All  who  have  conceived 
our  unity  as  a  oneness  of  power,  of  wealth,  of  outer 
greatness,  learn  that  the  only  enduring  unity  for 
any  people  is  unity  of  high  spiritual  aim. 

The  vision,  —  will  it  come  true?  It  is  for  us  to 
make  it  come  true;  visions  do  not  fulfil  themselves; 
men  fulfil  them. 

December  24. 

A  few  days  of  warm  sunshine,  fit  to  usher  in  the 
age  of  gold.  Yesterday  Tim  and  I  took  a  holiday 
and  raked  leaves  in  order  to  bank  hollyhocks  and 
daffodil  and  crocus  bulbs.  There  is  a  dim  blue  haze 
on  far-ofT  things;  and  near,  things  seem  reddening 
as  in  spring,  but  this  is  perhaps  only  an  effect  of  the 
unwonted  sunshine.  As  far  as  brown  fields  stretch 
away  earth  seems  all  golden  promise,  and  everywhere 


334  A  WORLD   TO   MEND 

is  a  sense  as  of  great  frosts  about  to  melt  and  let 
go,  in  this  charmed  pause  between  the  cessation  of 
the  war  agony  and  the  insistent  stirring  of  the  great 
problems  of  the  future.  All  questions  vanish  as  we 
wait  in  an  Indian  summer  calm,  that  is  as  a  vision 
of  fulfilment,  for  earth's  greatest  Christmas  day, 
inaugurating  a  lasting  Peace  on  Earth. 

As  I  work  in  my  shop,  a  breeze  comes  in  through 
the  open  window,  bringing  a  breath  of  the  sea. 
To-day  I  am  mending  a  pair  of  my  own  shoes,  for  a 
long  path  lies  ahead  of  me,  and  I  have  far  to  tread. 
For  the  present,  my  steps  shall  be  in  the  fields  I 
know,  and  I  shall  go  on  cobbling  here,  where  I  have 
earned  a  sense  of  home,  and  friends.  I  have  hope 
that  the  garden  gate  of  Jack  and  Katharine  will  not 
be  too  far  away,  and  that  I  may  often  lift  the  latch, 
finding  sometimes  within  not  only  their  two  selves, 
but  Grandmother  Brown. 

Not  without  hope  I  shall  live  on  in  Mataquoit, 
bending  my  strength  to  whatever  reforms  and 
changes,  local  or  national,  seem  to  promise  help  for 
the  future.  Some  day,  if  I  gain  much  wisdom,  I 
may  try  to  express  it  in  more  permanent  form  than 
these  rough  entries  in  my  ledger.  Before  this  I  have 
much  to  learn  and  shall  go  on  with  my  task  of  enter- 
ing into  the  life  of  my  fellows;  no  government  can 
relieve  me  of  that.  If  the  future  depends  on  intel- 
ligent accord  between  man  and  man,  between  nation 
and  nation,  our  great  need  is  sympathetic  insight. 
We  must  learn  to  understand,  not  criticize,  to  reach 
the  inner  motive ;  we  must  dig  deeper  into  the  soil 
of  human  life  than  we  have  ever  dug. 

I  have  recorded  here,  in  black  and  white,  but  a 
tithe  of  that  which  I  have  found  out;  the  better 


A  WORLD   TO   MEND  335 

part  of  human  wisdom  that  comes  from  experience 
can  not  be  set  down  in  words,  far  less  in  figures.  To 
tell  truth,  I  am  rejoicing  that  this  last  page  of  my 
ledger  leaves  me  no  room  for  balancing  accounts;  it 
is  too  early  yet  for  that. 

Looking  back,  I  can  not  count  my  months  here  as 
wholly  failure,  for  in  them  I  have  grown  into  closer 
relationship  with  my  kind ;  to  have  learned  to  sym- 
pathize and  to  care  as  one  did  not  at  thirty  is  not 
ito  have  failed  utterly.  When  I  stood  apart  and 
analyzed  my  fellow  man,  I  did  not  wholly  like  him ; 
certainly  he  has  many  qualities  that  are  far  from 
perfection  or  the  desire  for  perfection.  But  when 
I  cast  my  lot  with  his  and  struggle  with  him,  I  am 
aware  in  him  of  a  deep  stirring,  a  striving  toward 
an  excellence  dimly  apprehended,  perhaps  too  great 
for  formula,  too  deep  for  mind  alone  to  grasp. 

I  have,  in  truth,  solved  few,  if  any,  of  the  prob- 
lems of  democracy,  and  am  now,  at  the  end  of  my 
ledger,  but  at  the  beginning  of  my  task.  But  I  know 
that  I  have  gone  the  right  way  about  it,  and  I  know 
the  end  in  view:  to  learn  to  understand  my  neigh- 
bor, and  to  know  that  the  whole  world  is  my 
neighbor. 


THE  END 


THE  WORN  DOORSTEP 


By  MARGARET  SHERWOOD 
12mo.     Cloth 


An  American  woman  whose  English  lover  has  been  killed 
in  the  war  rents  a  house  in  a  tiny  English  village  and  finds 
some  comfort  in  the  people  who  seek  shelter  over  her  worn 
doorstep,  helping  her  to  forget  personal  loss  in  the  greater 
tragedy  around  her. 

"Occasionally,  very,  very  occasionally,  it  happens  that  a 
book  appears  whose  merits  one  would  like  to  shout  from 
the  housetops,  and  such  a  book  is  this." — The  New  York 
Times. 

"A  story  moulded  not  only  for  the  present  but  to  be  an 
enduring  testimony  of  war  and  the  triumph  of  woman's 
spirit  over  the  tragedy  of  war." — The  Boston  Transcript. 


By  the  game  author 

FAMILIAR  WAYS 

12mo.     Cloth 


A  volume  of  engagingly  brief  and  readable  essays  on 
subjects  close  to  everyday  life,  yet  constantly  suggestive  of 
wide  horizons  of  thought  and  feeling.  The  style  has  the 
same  distinction  which  has  won  so  much  praise  for  Miss 
Sherwood's  other  works. 

"Charmingly  written,  intimate  essays  whose  character 
may  be  shown  by  some  of  their  titles." — A.  L.  A.  BookKtt. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  COMPANY,  PUBLMHEM 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


A     000  040  786     6 


